


Part 1 : Gynasou

by hala_macaron



Series: When the monsters ruled the world [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, Still a draft, just organised better
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 47,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hala_macaron/pseuds/hala_macaron
Summary: They say not to stray from the paths. The paths are enchanted, blessed by magic. As long as you stay on them no monster, no creature and no magic can and will harm you. It’s ironic, isn’t it? Using magic to keep magic at bay. They erected those barriers everywhere, from Syktu’s walls and Kjarna’s cliffs all the way down to Lusrep’s coast.Blood divided the world and left it to die. Blood will, ultimately, have to make it right again.(The prologue is the one AO3 put as part 1, so you may want to read that one first)
Series: When the monsters ruled the world [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2080443





	1. Viktor’s Hill

Jonathan

Anyone considering a political career was nothing short of a fool. That very much included Jonathan’s younger and unbelievably naïve self. If there was such a thing as time travel he would have taken advantage of it without hesitation. He would have barged into the sleeping chambers of his younger self, taken him by his bony shoulders and shaken him until common sense would have shown its glowing face and shed some light on the cobwebs littering the boy’s mind.

Sadly there was no such thing. No magic in the world could make something like time travel possible. Messing with the natural flow of time was something unheard of. But what Jonathan wouldn’t have given for it to be real at that very moment.

Back when he had been named a Ruler, pride and honour had been the only things on his mind. He snorted, remembering how ecstatic he had been. He had almost cried that day, barely able to pull himself together. It wasn’t often someone as lowly as a mere Viscount was proclaimed a Ruler. Oh what a blind little fool he had been.

He was very much tempted to annoy the palace healer and her apprentice as soon as he got back. Perhaps he could convince her to end his misery. Screw that, of course he could. He just had to beg on his knees and tell her she could open up his skull to see what made him tick as soon as he was dead (the old woman had rolled her eyes and threatened to do that in good humour too many times to count).

While he himself was convinced that if she were to indeed cut his skull open and take a look at his brain she would find a few spiders having afternoon tea, complaining profusely about being so rudely interrupted, she had told him on multiple occasions that she was more likely to find cobwebs than anything alive. She had a gruff personality and sharp tongue. And even sharper tools. That was one of the reasons high up on his list of why to never get on her bad side. He pitied the fools who did.

He sighed and miraculously, it did nothing to quell the flames of rage dancing merrily through his body and setting any and all calm in his brain on fire.

The council meeting had been a disaster, every second of the five hours pure agony. As much as being a Ruler was fun, having to put up with the likes of Boone was torture.

‘ Perhaps,’ he mused, careful to dodge any servants crossing his path, ‘they should just put criminals into an interrogation room with him. They’d talk after 5 minutes, if only to not have to keep looking at his face. The only ones making it past ten minutes would be those with a death wish.’

Spending time with Boone was never a particularly joyous thing, but today had been worse than usual. Jonathan was still aching to get his hands around the old goat’s neck and squeeze until the sickly looking skin turned a pale shade of blue beneath his hands. How a despicable coward like Boone had managed to become the Ruler of the wealthiest city in existence was beyond Jonathan.

It proved that somewhere along the way something had gone terribly wrong. Or maybe Boone was just easy to control.

Jonathan hated that bastard. Boone always smiled condescendingly at him and pretended they were on good terms. They were not.

‘Lord Cullum!’

He cringed inwardly, mentally weeping for his plans of a carefree evening that had now left him for good. Horse shite. He plastered the most fake soft smile he could onto his face as he turned around. He fought the urge to groan when the advancing figure gradually turned less blurry. Really, he must wear his glasses more often, but he thought his face too soft whenever he did. So naturally, he didn’t wear them. Especially not to council meetings. If his eyesight suffered for his dignity, so be it.

‘Ms Vandor.’ Jonathan nodded his head in greeting. She scared the shit out of him on a good day, and this day was decidedly not good, but he couldn’t find the necessary strength to try and get on her good side right now. He was too exhausted for that. ‘To what do I owe this pleasure?’

A blush rose to her cheeks and Jonathan briefly wondered whether that occurred because of the pleasantry or her run.

Caris Vandor was a thin and tall intimidating woman with big eyes and a stare that could suck someone’s soul straight out of their body. Back when Jonathan had been named a ruler and first met her he’d almost bolted, taking her for a Shifter.

Despite being taller than the majority of servants and otherwise employed people of this shit show of a castle, she hunched over more often than not. She towered over people in a way not unlike a cassowary stalking its prey. Jonathan would know; the King kept some of those monsters that called themselves birds in his garden.

Caris was terrifying and downright cruel, barely treating servants like they were worth the dirt beneath her feet. She viewed them as disposable assets, means to an end nobody could see but her. To her, they were replaceable when they no longer served a purpose.

While Jonathan did not know exactly what she did for a living, in his humble opinion there were probably loads of overly qualified people, who did not possess her mean streak, out there. She was by far not the only organised and disciplined person there was. Someone else, someone more human, could surely take her job.

He didn’t know why she had been picked to work here. He found that he wasn’t all too keen on finding out either. Perhaps whatever nightmarish reasons he came up with in his head were better than the actual ones. Frankly, he was terrified to know what this woman was truly capable of.

If he were an honest person, and Jonathan had seldom been honest with himself, he would admit to being afraid. But showing fear, showing _weakness_ , was not an option. His Majesty would be appalled to know he had elected a wimp as the Ruler of Gynasou.

Plus, he didn’t trust the woman before him not to tell on him.

‘Forgive me for keeping you, my Lord, but I was wondering whether I would be in the position to enquire about what happened to Lord Boone?’

She didn’t blink, eyes fixed on a point behind him. The light grey colour still unnerved him after two years. Looking into her eyes was like standing on a field in the morning after a rainy night: Mist obscured everything from sight, isolating you and keeping you locked in a labyrinth of its own making. Mist was a silent and patient predator, caressing its prey and beckoning it to follow to wherever it was being lead. Nine times out of ten, the prey was lead to a cliff. Eight times out of nine, the prey was stupid enough to step over the edge and into the awaiting maw of merciless death. Seven times out of eight the prey was never found.

He prayed that if Ms Vandor decided to open up her maw and eat him, someone would find his remains. A bone would be nice, to remember him by. Not that he had any family to mourn him when his time of death came.

He was pulled out of his musings by her voice.

‘He seemed positively terrified,’ she said, completely void of any emotion. She stated a fact, a simple observation, nothing more.

Her eyes never crossed his, she didn’t look at him. Yet the urge to flee rose in Jonathan, pressing uncomfortably against his ribs and expanding rapidly. He felt like a cornered horse. Doing his best to push the feeling down, he reminded himself that he was still at the King’s castle. If there had ever been a good time for a fight or flight reaction, this was definitely not it.

‘I wish I could help you Ms Vandor, truly, I do,’ he said, praying his voice was as stable as he needed it to be. ‘But I’m afraid that I do not know what spooked Lord Boone this terribly. He seemed perfectly well throughout our meeting.’

A odd look crossed her face briefly, as if she had eaten something incredibly sour just then. Jonathan kept his carefully placed mask of neutrality firmly in place. He could dwell on her display of humanity later if he so desired. Which he wouldn’t, but no one had to know that. It was unseemly for a Ruler to not care about someone who, due to their status, was ultimately one of his citizens.

He smiled softly, even though he was pretty sure she didn’t give a rat’s arse. The things we do to maintain our reputation…or to survive someone’s presence.

‘Not to worry Ms Vandor, perhaps he is merely exhausted. It was quite a long day after all, and he has to endure a long ride back to Lusrep.’ He hesitated, angling himself to face the corridor that would lead him to the entrance hall and ultimately, outside. Arcnara was near, so he would not have to endure a long carriage ride. ‘As it is, I am terribly exhausted as well. If you would excuse me, Ms Vandor.’

That seemed to snap her out of whatever calculations she had done in her head. Before she could open her mouth to answer him however, he turned and walked away at a more brisk pace than he would have liked.

_Flight or fight, flight or fight, flight or fight, flight it is._

He knew he looked like he was fleeing. Which, admittedly, he was. Kind of. Jonathan needed to get out of the King’s home and finally breathe some fresh air again. Being a Ruler came with quite a few benefits. Regularly having to stay within the halls of Viktor’s Hill was not one of them. On the contrary; it made him want to retch.

Viktor’s Hill was dark and imposing, seemingly endless, despite it not being as grand as Arcnara’s palace. Sometimes Jonathan wondered why the King and his family, those who held all the power in the world, would stay at Viktor’s Hill, the dark castle on a small hill overlooking Arcnara and not at something a bit more fit for nobility.

He understood that it was tradition, but he couldn’t imagine how one managed to raise kids in here. The castle was cold. Time didn’t seem to exist here and sometimes, neither did the people wandering Viktor’s Hill. Sometimes you became part of the echoes filling the halls, a whisper or a gust of wind so faint it barely touched the skin.

Unless someone called out to you, spoke your name aloud, you could not hear them, neither their breathing nor their footsteps. Even the whispers of your own mind seemed to quiet down, leaving behind emptiness and shifting darkness.

Thankfully, and Jonathan really did thank his lucky stars for that, the rooms of the estate did not reek of blood, fear or death. If you sat next to the wrong person they sometimes smelled unpleasantly of sweat, but really, that was your problem. Jonathan thought he had heard screams of agony coming from behind the thick and impeccably polished walls once. He had shaken his head at himself back then. Naturally, he had imagined them after a long day.

Because thinking of anything else was rubbish. Pure and utter rubbish.

He hated spending time here nevertheless. Here, everyone became invisible, unimportant. He despised feeling unimportant more than anything. He always delivered perfection to ensure he wasn’t cast aside, wasn’t void of use. Jonathan had seen what happened to useless things more often than not. He didn’t want that for himself.

He didn’t hear Ms Vandor answering as he reached the end of the corridor and hurried down the silver and black staircase to reach the doors. Two servants, still and unwavering like statues, opened the doors for him.

The pleasantly cool night welcomed him. If it hadn’t been for the various servants awaiting orders by the carriages, he might have kissed the ground. As it was, he had to preserve his dignity.


	2. Drunk Sinner’s Church

Caris

She watched him go, dark red robes billowing behind him as he fled. Her gaze turned sharp and calculating, her mind going over the conversation and his expressions again.

She knew he wouldn’t hear her, but for manner’s sake she answered anyways.

‘Of course, Lord Cullum. Have a good night.’

Caris had to admit that she was curious about the boy. As far as she knew, and she never doubted her informant’s words, he was an orphaned viscount from Niro. He had never done anything worth the attention of the King and Queen, yet they had named him Ruler of Gynasou, and, by default, Arcnara. Quite suspicious, but it wasn’t her place to ask questions.

Not unprompted, anyways.

The candles illuminating the hallway started to flicker, fighting against an invisible foe, desperately clinging to life. Unsurprisingly, they lost. Caris found herself unable to see anything in the darkness. She didn’t move. Not because she wouldn’t be able to find her way around the castle, but because she had played this game before. And while the King never tired of it, she had learned that running was not something he wanted her to do. Not anymore.

She was, after all - and he had been so giddy and proud when he had told her - not a mouse anymore. She was a fellow cat now.

‘A kitten, Caris, you’re not accustomed to everything yet. But I am oh so delighted you are not a mouse anymore, my dear,’ he had said, eyes gleaming while he had idly signed papers. Papers that, as she would later learn, demanded the deaths of no less than fifteen children.

At the beginning she had still bothered learning the names. After five years, she didn’t have it in her to do so anymore.

A light ignited next to her face, close enough to set her on fire if she breathed the wrong way. Raising one eyebrow she glanced to the side, meeting the dull and indifferent stare of a guard. Two of his fingers were burning, the flames big enough to illuminate their faces but nothing else. An Elemental then, she concluded. By the look on his face, an utterly devoted one. A devoted idiot, wonderful. As if there weren’t enough running around.

She breathed in, slowly counting from five downwards in her head. She didn’t move a muscle. It wouldn’t be long now.

_Three, two, one…_

‘My, my, Caris, cut the boy some slack,’ a voice crooned from somewhere in the darkness.

Her lips twitched. The guard standing before her didn’t so much as blink, but there was a subtle shift of fear in the previously dead eyes. He was either new to these impromptu meetings or he had just received some form of punishment.

‘Did you have to toy with him like that? Now he’s all shaken and frightened and I’ve worked so hard to make you two bond.’

Wherever he was, he was definitely pouting now. Caris did not need to see the King’s face to know that. As much as he could be a pokerfaced genius, his voice could give away the tiniest shift in expression.

‘Is he dangerous?’

The voice scoffed, clearly offended.

‘Do you think I would keep him here if he was?’

‘Yes,’ she said, eyes trained on the shifting darkness behind the guard. _Found you._ ‘I can see you.’

‘Of course you can, dear, I am, after all, not hiding,’ he sighed, stepping forward into the light. Long bony fingers came to rest on the chin of his guard, lightly tapping it to a foreign rhythm.

‘What do you think of this one? Magnificent, isn’t he? A gift from our dear friend Boone…but I think he just got tired of not being able to tame this precious little gem,’ he giggled, predatory gaze snapping to her while his nails left half moon imprints in his poor victim’s flesh.

Said boy didn’t even wince, and if Caris hadn’t seen the sheer terror in his eyes, she would have been prone to dip her head in approval. Really, she should have known better. His Majesty seldom selected perfect soldiers to toy with.

‘Is he potty trained or did you come here to ask me to break him in?’

Practice makes perfect, if she recalled the saying correctly. Years of practice had made it impossible for someone to detect any sort of emotion in her voice. No matter how much the notion of “training” the poor boy in front of her disgusted her, if the King ordered her to, she would.

The drawn out sigh was merely for show. His eyes were glittering, betraying his excitement. He was enjoying this. In all honesty, Caris would have been suspicious had it been any other way.

‘Must you be so terribly crude, my dear? Really now, look at him,’ he commanded, voice taking on an icy tone. ‘Do you think I brought him here to be potty trained?’

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. She understood him well enough.

It didn’t take long. To an untrained eye, Caris didn’t so much as twitch. It took one well placed swipe and blood sprayed onto her clothes and the floor.

The flames on the boy’s fingers had extinguished as soon as her knife had dragged through soft skin, and yet the hallway remained as illuminated as before. Glancing to the spaces between the pillars littering the hallway, she noticed servants placing candle holders, which were just as polished as everything else, in the empty spaces.

She watched the red steadily staining the floor. Taking a few steps to the side as to not get more on her shoes than there already was, she raised her grey eyes from the mess. Her mouth formed a thin line and light eyebrows almost touched an equally light hairline. Her employer sighed.

‘Really, Caris?’ He gestured to the corpse on the ground. ‘You couldn’t have taken him anywhere else? This’ll take ages to clean up,’ he muttered, half heartedly annoyed.

Caris shrugged in response, her dress becoming uncomfortable to wear as the material had absorbed the blood and stuck to her skin. She’d have to throw that one in the trash, or burn it right away. What a shame. It had been a birthday present from the Queen.

The King wasn’t annoyed by her actions, not really. If he had wanted a more…public execution of whoever this had been, he would have had called for her outside. Alas, he hadn’t. He’d come to her, probably eager to see how much power he had over her. Willing to get drunk on careful violence and the obedience of his unofficial executioner.

If someone were to ask Caris, she’d say that his Majesty was in desperate need of a few therapy sessions. Or an outright ousting. Put someone a bit more stable on the throne. Someone a little less bloodthirsty in the very least.

But nobody ever asked, so she kept her mouth shut and her opinions, for the most part, to herself.

Besides, watching him sidestep the puddle of what he oh so often called “liquid life” was the most entertaining thing she’d seen all day.

‘You never answered my question,’ she stated, her voice still void of any and all emotion. She would let some slip when she had to but right now he was too absorbed in not getting his robe dirty to care.

His face scrunched up, making the paint in his eyebrows and on his temples crumble and flake. Heaving an annoyed sigh, he gestured to the flakes falling to the ground. The colours were an absurd contrast to the black of the tiles.

‘Would you look at that. We trade in paints, and yet nobody manages to apply something decent that lasts me for a day. Idiots,’ he grumbled, ‘Would it kill them to paint me in something less clay like?’

‘I do believe it’s fashionable somewhere. May I have my answer now?’

Caris was growing more annoyed by the second. And considerably more unsettled.

The King tutted, shaking one finger at her in good humour. ‘Manners my dear. But you are right, I’ve made you wait. Do remind me of your question.’

‘Is he dangerous?’

‘No, no, he’s not,’ he said. ‘That boy is a terribly ambitious people pleaser. Easy to mould, easy to control. It’ll be fun hanging out with him, you’ll see. Oh,’ he handed her a small piece of paper, perfectly folded and clean.

‘Be a dear and choose some for me, will you? I’m afraid I cannot decide whom I want to see die this week.’ He chuckled, snapping his fingers to make the servants attending the candles disappear in a flurry of dark blouses and trousers.

‘Now run along. You did well today.’

‘Thank you, Your Majesty. My greetings to the Queen and the Prince and Princess.’

When the doors finally clicked shut behind her, Caris let out a sigh of relief, actively trying to lose some of the tension that had taken residence in her body.

The sun was setting and Caris took comfort in the gentle glow. She could make out Arcnara’s towers and palace in the distance and she knew that soon enough darkness would settle over the earth and Arcnara would be set alight by lamps and laughter. It was a rather lively city. But how couldn’t it be, when so many people lived so closely together and breathed the same air?

Caris bit her lip. Yes, Arcnara was lively. And on the surface, if one didn’t know where to look, it could even be called gentle. But it wasn’t. Nothing ever was completely and utterly gentle or sweet. The world didn’t work like that, least of all a world run by…run like this.

She shook her head and felt a few strands of hair escaping from their position in her low ponytail. Hands clenching at her sides she took a few deep breaths, desperately trying to calm herself and make the pressing burn welling up inside her disappear before it reached her eyes. It took her a few minutes of standing as still as the statues littering the Royal Family’s garden but eventually the feeling subsided enough for her to shove it into a box and slam the lid shut.

Her timing was the best it could be too. She had just found her composure again when three servants, two boys and one girl, carried the body of the ex-guard outside and all but threw him on the ground. They hadn’t noticed Caris yet. If they had, they would have spoken quieter.

‘So what do we do with him now? There’s no graveyards for folk like him,’ one of them spat, cracking his knuckles and shaking out his hands.

The girl nudged the corpse with her foot. She shrugged in response to the question, stilled in thought for a moment before tapping the muscled man next to her. He looked at her and she started moving her hands in a rapid fashion. Caris recognised sign language when she saw it but she’d never learned it. The man next to the servant nodded. The one who had spoken first started tapping his foot, obviously annoyed by the silent conversation he was unable to take part in.

‘Well?’

Oh he was a truly impatient sort, Caris thought to herself. Probably one of the servants she had never bothered to learn the name of.

‘Kira says we could tie him to the old chapel’s tower. Let the crows and ravens have their pick.’

Caris frowned. She knew that voice. That one wasn’t a servant, he was part of the guard. He was easy to recognise, his voice carrying a clear accent. Harsh and clipped like ice, he sounded like someone who’d grown up speaking the language of Prular. _Sikan_.

Sikan scowled at the girl, what had he called her? Kira.

‘That is no way to treat the dead;’ he admonished.

‘Pff,’ the other guy - Caris wished she had a name, referring to him as “guy” was slowly becoming quite bothersome- scoffed, ‘ ‘s not like they deserve anything. Do ya know what he could have done to us, Sikan? To Ker?’

Whoever Ker was, something dark crossed Sikan’s face at the mention of that name. Kira seemed to become nervous, sensing some sort of danger and trying to warn her fellow servant to back up now. Unfortunately for Caris, he seemed to notice. She would have enjoyed a show.

‘He could have killed us at any time,’ he spat, viciously kicking the still body that lay to his feet. ‘He would have too! I know his sort.’

‘Do you now,’ Sikan muttered, scowling at the boy in front of him but refraining from saying anything insulting.

Kira had resolved to snapping her fingers to get her companions’ attention and now that she had it, she pointed to the corpse and then to Sikan. She smirked at him, flipped him the bird and started walking back to the castle.

Sikan’s scowl deepened.

‘Hah! Kira’s right. You worry ‘bout how we treat the dead? Then you do it, big guy! Have fun.’

‘Go play with the bed bugs Paul,’ Sikan hissed in return, bending down to haul the corpse onto his shoulders. He froze in the middle of doing his task, eyes meeting Caris’ stare.

She could see his mouth working to form words that ultimately ended up being nothing but air. She saw him tense up. His gaze flickered from her to the body, apparently doing the math and working it out. She would have been disappointed if he hadn’t. Guards without brains were common but she tended to like the ones who actually knew what they were doing more.

‘Bury him somewhere no one will care to look,’ she called out. ‘It won’t do if someone digs him up again to string him up by his feet.’

He didn’t say anything in return but she felt his gaze trying to burn a hole into her skull when she turned to walk away.

_Foolish boy. Dig a hole and get the proper rites over with. This is no place to show compassion._

Well meant as her words were, she did not dare speak them aloud. As she had stated, the home of the Royal Family was no place for others to show compassion to each other. It was a death sentence if nothing else. And Caris ultimately had a reputation to uphold.

She should have taken a carriage to the city. She should have stripped out of her bloodstained dress and wear servant’s clothes if necessary.

Caris smiled coldly. She should have done a lot of things.

People in the place she was headed to seldom cared for blood on anyone’s clothes. And while she feared the affect these establishments could have on her partners in crime in the long run, there were only so many chances to meet without anyone giving a rat’s ass about your name or appearance.

Caris picked up her pace, fastening an old cloak around her shoulders and throwing the hood up. There was no need to disturb any passersby after all.

Heading for the path that would lead her to Arcnara’s lower districts, she contemplated the significance behind these meetings. Would someone catch them before they could do anything? Or would something good actually come out of their efforts?

Caris snorted. She could think of 10 ways everything could go wrong after she had had something to eat.

The smell of smoke, ale and fried onions assaulted her nose when she stepped over the threshold of the Drunk Sinner’s Church.


	3. A day to enjoy being a sky

Echo

**_They say to not stray from the paths unless death is what your soul hungers for. The paths are enchanted, a safety measure and the only way to keep us safe from what lingers beneath stones and circles the sky at night. No claws will rip into soft flesh and no teeth will tear the insides from your body, no tongue will lick until all that remains of you is bone smooth with spit and no venom will turn your brain to liquid so that it may be easier to consume. As long as you do not stray from the paths, you are safe._ **

**_That, my dear friend, is the boldest lie they could have ever come up with. Nobody is safe. Not anymore._ **

**_They used magic in the most horrendous way imaginable: to keep magic at bay, trapped behind barriers it cannot destroy. They spilt the blood of all magical beings they hired to construct their precious barriers and disrespected the corpses to their feet._ **

**_From Willowburg’s fields to Kjarna’s cliffs, from Lusrep’s labrinths over Onazeko’s swamp bridges and Arcnara’s tunnels to Syktu’s walls; they wreaked havoc._** **_They left nothing but pain and destruction and now they think they can claim safety for themselves. As if it has not become nothing more than hollow letters forming an empty word._**

**_It didn’t matter that their victims had begged and cried. They had served their purpose and then they had to die, by decree of a false King sitting on a throne made of bones and rotting flesh. His crown was far too light for his status, made from twigs and footprints._ **

**_From the moment he placed himself at the top of the world, freedom was taken from those who had learned the true meaning of the word. No one is free anymore._ **

**_Magic was caged in, and so was everyone else. Little did they think that predator and prey would soon hold no meaning anymore, for they all became prey, and all became predators._ **

****

The rest of the page was torn off, the yellowed parchment hanging in bits and pieces from its leather prison. There might have been more information or a drawing of a rune or a Star Circle. Something useful and less threatening than the hastily written words.

Echo sighed and threw her head back, the sudden gesture making the candle next to her flicker. She’d drawn the curtains shut a long time ago so there would be no additional light or, gods above, some drunk fool trying to make conversation. Now that she could see light peak through the thick fabric, it dawned on her that she’d been brooding over these texts for a whole night. Wonderful. At least she wouldn’t have to show up at Omra’s library until 11.

Muttering some unintelligible nonsense about at what point late nights could be considered early mornings, she turned her neck this and that way until her joints popped. She cast an annoyed look at the innocent looking leather tome on her desk. Maybe it was just the fact that she’d spent an entire night trying to decipher the various languages, runes, symbols and scribbles and hadn’t gotten further than the first twenty pages, but the book looked entirely too smug for an inanimate object.

‘You,’ she said accusingly, pointing one finger at it, ‘are a menace. But I must put up with you to achieve this…thing. And the sooner I do that, the sooner you get as far away from my fingers as you please.’ Sighing again, she nudged one of the pages with the feathered end of her quill. ‘Help me out a bit?’

Echo Torr had taken to talking to books when she became Omra’s apprentice. One of their many, many apprentices. Arcnara’s library was quite big so of course the trusty, if a bit moody, librarian would take on as many good apprentices as they were able to.

Did talking to books help her sanity? No, definitely not. The most frustrating books she had ever taken care of seldom gave a damn about her state of mind and remained as uncooperative as objects could ever manage to be. On the other hand, did talking to books in a diplomatic way help their working relationship? Surprisingly yes, it did.

Some books did not like to be touched when one had dust on their fingers, others did not accept anything else than sweet talk, and yet again others made your life a whole lot more difficult when you babied them. Figuring out what kind of book you were dealing with was always step number one. Step number two to ten generally consisted of avoiding being hurt because of a mistake you made.

It had taken a while for her to atone her senses to the delicate shift in energy around books. She still wasn’t as perfect as she would have liked to be but as her brother dear always said: Practice makes perfect.

This book posed no more a new and unique challenge, she reminded herself, than every other book did. She needn’t worry; she would get the hang of it soon enough. That did not mean that the book wasn’t annoying the shit out of her.

She groaned, picking up a hair tie and pulling her curls back. Morning was already here, and Ravindra was rising steadily. Time for a bath. Echo found that she was in desperate need of relaxation. And she needed to get the sweat off of her. Frustration sweat was the worst.

After blowing out the candle and snapping the tome shut, she tip toed around her home to the bathroom, trying to avoid waking up her brother. If the clock near the oak table in the kitchen was anything to go by, it was half past six in the morning. Neither her brother nor her were particularly enticed by the idea of getting up early, but while Echo tended to get lost in her research and therefore got up early more often than not, Aeneas mostly had to get up early by force.

They had reached the agreement to not wake the other up unless absolutely necessary.

The bathroom was not exactly big. Then again, neither was their house.

It did, however, have everything one needed; a generously sized bathtub, a rather big mirror, chamber pots, soaps and the likes.

As she let the warm water fill the tub and the scent of lemons and ginger started to permeant the air, Echo tried very hard not to think about how new all of this still was. Barely seven months ago, Aeneas and her had moved into one of the upper districts of Arcnara. Not very high up, mind you, but high enough to have running water.

Echo wondered whether their old home had already been painted over with white. Speaking of paint, Aeneas and her would have to settle on how to paint their current home. They still hadn’t done that.

When Aeneas finally woke up and dragged himself to the kitchen, Echo was already dressed. Her brother eyed the stack of bread rolls on the table.

‘You should take some with you for lunch, you know,’ he said, yawning and blinking to get the residue sleepiness out of his eyes.

Echo only shook her head, snorting at him.

‘Florian’s taking all of us out for lunch. He wants us to meet his sweetheart and the best way to do so is over lunch, apparently.’ She turned around and smiled at her brother. ‘I’m certainly not complaining.’

‘Who in their right mind would?’ He laughed but frowned soon after. ‘Don’t wait up for me tonight, okay? Lisha needs me to cover for her, there’s some kind of meeting she has to attend.’

Echo raised one eyebrow, eyes meeting her brother’s equally dark ones. ‘And she can’t take you with her? You’ve been her apprentice for two years now.’

‘There has to be at least one healer at the palace,’ he reminded her. ‘And I’m the only apprentice she has. There’s no one else.’

She nodded slowly and started moving around the room to pack up her things. It was warm outside, not as warm as it could have been, but warm enough for a winter day that she didn’t need her coat. Her apprentice uniform and bag would suffice.

Echo turned around one last time to bid her brother goodbye when she caught sight of his grin and the silver twinkle in his eyes. Her own narrowed instinctively.

‘Say hi to Omra for me, will you?’

Echo balked. ‘Are you crazy? They’d have me on dust duty for a month!’

‘Oh come on, please,’ he called after her, almost doubling over in laughter, ‘I would kill to see their face!’

‘Well good for you, but I’m not ready to be murdered,’ she huffed, not in the least bit offended, and shut the front door behind her.

Arcnara was brimming with life.

Several people were swarming up and down the cobbles of the main road, a sea of colours to get lost in. Echo’s lips twitched as she wormed her way through the masses of servants, apprentices, lower class nobility and workers. Not one of them resembled any of the others too closely, neither in looks nor mannerisms.

As the main road gradually grew fuller and more hectic, Echo decided to try her luck with the alleys, dodging hands and bags full of purchases as she dove to the right and made a sharp turn down a rather old flight of stairs. She hurried down, taking another sharp turn to the left and breaking into a sprint. The alley she had chosen was narrow and barely left any space for more than two people at the same time. The bricks of the houses encasing it were splattered with dark blue paint, contrasting with the storm of oranges and dirty golds of her uniform. Her keys jingled in one of her trouser’s endless pockets. Their clinking was much higher than the ringing of the small bells fastened to her leather bag.

‘Echo, dear,’ someone called out and she stopped running to look up. On a balcony above her, the familiar wrinkly face of Richard Byrne showed up. As always, the man was clad in white linen robes and a straw hat. Echo smiled.

‘Good morning Mr Byrne! How fares the light of your crayons?’

He laughed merrily, eyes twinkling. Echo had always found them to a peculiar colour, a swirling mixture of pink and white. It reminded her of the orchids in Omra’s study near the astrology section in the library.

‘It fares well, my child! I may have chosen the wrong robe to wear today, however,’ he said, sheepishly clutching the back of his straw head. ‘I fear I will stain another one.’

Mr Byrne was an artist. He worked with all kinds of chalk and crayons, more often than not staining his clothes and skin. At times he looked more like a walking rainbow than a human. Whenever someone pointed it out, however, he merely chuckled and took the broken crayon of the day out of his bag, grinding it to a paste or to dust and drawing symbols onto the faces of the people around him. He had once drawn a circle with a sun inside onto Echo’s eyelids and forehead. The paste had cracked by the time she had gotten home, thick and of the brightest most fierce red Echo had ever seen.

She cherished that memory.

‘One more for the collection then? What’ll it be today? Some blues? You might look like the sky when you are finished!’

Mr Byrne generally owned only white linen robes. Whenever he painted or drew, he inevitably stained his hands, arms and face. Along with his robes. Sometimes they got stained so badly they were never able to fully turn white again. Mr Byrne now owned several white linen robes and also over twenty different pastel robes. Some of them were not stained evenly and looked like leaves and blossoms had fallen from a tree into a river of white.

‘Ah, yes! It truly is a day to enjoy being a sky, is it not?’ He smiled at her and then shook his head. ‘Run along Echo, I’ve kept you here far too long. Wouldn’t want you to get stuck dusting off book covers all by yourself!’

She bid him goodbye and then continued hurrying through the little maze of alleyways, almost colliding with some servants here and there. In the end it took her thirty more minutes to reach the marketplace. She crossed it, carefully dodging merchants and interested buyers alike. Her lips curled when she almost fell into one of the fountains because someone had carelessly pushed her aside to get to one of the silk stands. The first district of Arcnara always was a mess.

She sighed in relief when she finally took the last turn down one of the streets leading to Arcnara’s library. _Five minutes_ , she thought to herself, passing the fat orange cat that always sat on the same damn spot near the doors leading to the entrance hall of the library. _Five minutes on that damn market without being pushed around, is that too much to ask for?_

Arcnara’s library was a thing of grotesque beauty. It was the only building in Arcnara that had never been painted, apart from some cathedrals and temples in the city. Therefore it was, at least mostly, an off white colour. In some places, especially the study areas, the soot and smoke of candles had stained the stone a greyish brown.

While the library was spacious, certainly grand and even comfortable, many avoided it as much as they could. If you asked the people on the street why that was, they would whisper about how devils and demons had been trapped in the building, deforming the stone. It was a load of rubbish, of course, for Arcnara’s library had been built that way. Omra, at least, said so. But looking at it, it was easy to understand why people believed what they did; the stone looked almost fluid and jagged in some places at the same time, as if water had forced its way through and had shaped everything in its path before some rounded edges had collided with hammers and chisels. The glass of the windows was misshapen and tinted in an array of various colours, depending on what rooms and sections you were in.

Echo cared as much for the sorry state of stone as the next person. That was to say, not at all. When it came to this particular building, however, she cared a lot, making sure nothing collapsed or voicing her concerns when it looked like something would. Arcnara’s library may have been a more or less colourful mix of scents, knowledge and questionable aesthetics, but it was familiar and it was home.

She hated being on dust duty though. It was necessary and she knew that but she hated it nonetheless.

Omra, of course, had made sure she was on dust duty this week. Punishment for being late on the first day of the week, according to them. They were a downright hypocrite. It wasn’t like they had shown their face any sooner than 5pm, which begged the question how they’d known she’d been late that day.

Perhaps, Echo mused, they had just assumed she’d be just as exhausted by their and Caris’s meeting on Sunday and would sleep in. They hadn’t been wrong, as much as it irked her.

She quickly put on her work slippers and got all her tools out of her bag to put them in their places either in one of her pockets or the belts hanging around her middle and reaching down to her hips. She waved to Florian and Alina, who were almost covered in brooms as they tried to climb up the uneven stairs leading to the Astrology study. Sighing when she finally arrived at the doors to the History study, armed with various rags and small brooms made from sticks and pigeon feathers, Echo prepared herself for a day full of very monotonous, incredibly mundane work.

As it turned out, she couldn’t have been more wrong. She was pretty sure having guards show up at your workplace and demanding, on behalf of the King, you come with them because his Majesty wanted to speak to you, didn’t exactly qualify as a mundane or ordinary way to end the day.

She should have bribed that rat like bastard outside of the Drunk Sinner’s Church into silence. Fuck.


	4. Dire situations call for strange allies

Aeneas

Sometimes things just go terribly wrong and nobody is at fault.

If Aeneas repeated that enough times, it would come true, he was sure of it. His family, himself included, was just terribly unlucky in every area of life. And it was nobody’s fault.

That was, of course, pure and utter bullshit, which did not mean that it didn’t make him feel better. Sometimes, not every time. The majority of the time Aeneas wanted to bang his head against the wall, scream, and curse the common sense both he and his sister possessed. Or rather, the lack thereof.

When Lisha, his mentor of two years, had asked him to stay longer and make sure everything went smooth as butter, Aeneas had said yes without giving it much thought. And why would he have? Lisha was old and grumpy and had a terrible sense of humour, but she was honest. She wouldn’t lie to him about anything. Aeneas was sure of that.

What a buffoon he was.

‘ Tell me, _Aeneas_ ,’ the man before him said softly, his voice almost a tad bit too sweet. ‘ Did you think nobody would notice you stealing food from the palace?’

‘ My Lord, I…’

‘I wonder,’ the man interrupted him, searching out Aeneas’ gaze, ‘am I to endure more lies today than I already have? It would be a downright shame, don’t you think?’

Aeneas said nothing. He clenched his hands under the table, desperately trying to keep his gaze planted on the golden cutlery adorning the table. It wasn’t like he was the only one occasionally taking food from the palace with him. He had seen others do it a thousand times.

He, of course, was the only one who had ever been caught doing so.

Sighing and shaking his head, the other man turned to one of the servants standing to the side.

‘Leave us. All of you.’

‘Lord Cullum…’

‘Was I unclear? I know how to deal with thieves and liars. Now please, out with you.’

It didn’t take long for the room to be empty, save for Aeneas and the lord of the palace. The Ruler of Gynasou. And currently, the bane of Aeneas’ existence.

‘Aeneas. I would like for you to look at me.’

His voice had changed. While it had been commanding and rather cold before, reminding Aeneas of thin and sharp ice that could easily be broken by just a little pressure, now it was unnervingly silky and inviting. It was the familiar lull of a bubbling stream on a warm day in summer; serene, beckoning, homely.

He scowled, finally looking up into his friend’s eyes as the last servant left the room. The nerve of this guy was sometimes more than Aeneas felt he wanted to handle.

Vibrant sky blue eyes met Aeneas’ own brown ones, rich like soil and filled with silver starlight.

‘So,’ he hissed. ‘I’m looking at you. What now?’

Jonathan pouted, the expression childish on a face of sharp edges and harsh lines.

‘Why the fuck did you steal food Neas? And why did you let someone catch you?’

‘First of all, I didn’t let anyone catch me, John, I just don’t steal food often enough to fool the cooks,’ Aeneas shot back, watching his friend’s face sour at the nickname. Jonathan hated his name, but he absolutely despised any and all nicknames made from it. Mean as it was, something inside Aeneas relished at making the stony ruler show some of his true self; of the emotions he couldn’t keep off his face when he was with someone he trusted. If that happened to be disgust, well then, so be it. Tough luck if John would rather not feel.

‘Neas…if, if you and Echo can’t manage, I’ll help. You know that, right?’

Aeneas groaned. Of course. This is what he had wanted people to think, right? That all that food he had been stealing was for Echo and him, that they needed it but that he had been too ashamed to admit that. Upper district people and nobility ate sob stories like those for breakfast: The orphaned siblings from the lower districts of Arcnara, working hard to prove themselves in a social class they weren’t born into.

Fuck them all.

He was tempted to say yes. It wouldn’t be a big deal if he did. John would help him and he could continue his sneaky little game in the dark.

He couldn’t do it. Johnathan had been his friend for two years now, the two of them spending more time together than either of their schedules technically allowed. Mostly it was Jonathan who showed up and just kept Aeneas silent company during long and endless nights spent studying and documenting. He was fair and he cared.

‘I know you would. But the food’s not for Echo and me.’ Aeneas inhaled deeply, noting the subtle twitch in Jonathan’s jaw and the way his black eyebrows rose almost high enough to meet the slicked back hair. A silent invitation to continue.

‘It’s for a few families in the third district.’

The silence that followed Aeneas’ words was deafening and thick enough to slice with a knife. He studied Jonathan, his own back rigid against the chair. What he’d been doing wasn’t a bad thing and he wouldn’t let himself be judged for it.

Arcnara’s third and fourth district were arguably the poorest, the colours that made Arcnara unique faded and dull. Who couldn’t be housed by one of the crumbling buildings either slept on the street, on roofs or built a makeshift tent.

The second one was for people who were well off but not too well, like he and Echo were now. The first district was reserved for the rich, merchants and lower class nobility and the likes. District zero was for high class nobility and it surrounded Arcnara’s palace.

Up until a few months ago, he and Echo had lived in the upper third district, as Aeneas had been Lisha’s second apprentice and there had not been much money. Now that he spent more time at the palace, he had taken to stealing food for some of their old neighbours whenever he could. Echo spent a lot of her free time down in district three and four, trying to teach children, teenagers and adults alike so that some of them would be able to escape the system or at least not be looked down upon.

He and his sister had seen the horrors of being forgotten and discarded, of being looked down upon and sneered at by people who thought they were better simply because they had been born higher up in the food chain. Fuck them.

‘I see.’ Jonathan’s voice was toneless but the way he fidgeted with one sleeve of his deep red robe betrayed his slight discomfort. ‘Is…,’ he broke off, straightened up and his voice lost the lull of a stream, taking up the calm force of ripples in a pond instead. And Aeneas had thrown the stone.

‘How bad is it?’

‘Haven’t you visited them?’

Jonathan flushed a bright red, furious in colour and betraying his emotions.

‘No,’ he said softly, sounding very small and a tad bit ashamed of himself. Aeneas pressed his teeth together so hard he thought the pressure might make them break. Had he been as pale as John, he was sure he’d have flushed equally as bright, though for entirely different reasons altogether.

‘You! No?! What do you mean, no,’ he spluttered, trying to keep the growl lodged in his throat from entering his voice. John never reacted well to anger, but full blown rage would make everything worse.

‘I won’t be able to stand it, alright? I’d probably throw up instead of giving them hope.’

Aeneas stared incredulously at him, opening and closing his mouth a few times.

‘So?! You’re not meant to be able to stand it! Yu’s tits, John, you’re meant to see them and help! You’re Gynasou’s Ruler for fuck’s sake. You want to tell me you toured through this country and made proposals and changes were you could but don’t want to help the citizens of your own city?!’

He was panting by the end of his outburst, glaring at Jonathan, who glared right back at him, eyes blazing. His blush had spread down his neck, as it tended to do when he was either angry or embarrassed. Aeneas hoped it was both. Sprinkle a bit of humiliation in there for good measure and then John would hopefully get over himself.

In the back of his brain, Aeneas noted that at least now the heavy ruby necklace didn’t stand out as much against his friend’s skin as it did when he was his usual pale self. It was a funny thought, a small flicker of light in the sea of blazing anger.

‘You don’t fucking get it Neas. I can’t help them! So why should I visit them? It would only make everything worse,’ he hissed, slowly rising from his seat. His jewellery, clearly marking him as the Ruler, gleamed in the light of the setting sun that illuminated the room. He looked ethereal, every bit an angry god who was too pretty for the bleeding fire of a sunset.

Aeneas opened his mouth to retort something vicious but was stopped by the white doors of the dining room banging open. The woman barging in was on a mission and she would not be denied. Her stride was enough to tell him that. He almost jumped when she turned her eyes on him briefly. They were a light grey, almost the subtle colour of fog. Had her hair been grey as well and not the brilliant white it was, he might have taken her for a ghost. She didn’t look dead, but that didn’t make her any less frightening.

She bowed before Jonathan.

‘Lord Cullum, my most sincere apologies for barging in unannounced. I am afraid I’ll have to borrow your healer’s apprentice. Lisha is back in her lab. Rest assured I would not leave you without a healer present in your palace.’

Jonathan, the utter bastard, jumped on the chance to escape this very uncomfortable discussion with remarkable grace. He waved one hand at the woman.

‘You would not disturb us without reason, Ms Vandor. Your apology is appreciated. Whatever happened that made you hurry like this?’

The woman, Ms Vandor, tensed for not more than one heartbeat.

‘A few of my men were injured by an unknown burglar when they tried to stop him from breaking and entering into Arcnara’s library. We cannot be sure Omra and their apprentices are unharmed, as they came back from dinner when it happened and a few of their ducklings were not among them,’ she reported stoically, using the official nickname Omra’s apprentices had earned themselves because of the way they clung to their teacher as if they had imprinted on Omra.

‘We need a healer there and we may have to call relatives of the apprentices there, as is law.’ Caris offered no other explanation but she didn’t need to. With Jonathan’s permission, which he’d given rather quickly if a bit alarmed, she dragged Aeneas out of the palace faster than he had though imaginable. Especially since, compared to him, she seemed rather slight in build.

Once they were a good distance from the palace she turned down an alley and pressed him up against the neatly painted brick wall of a house. The knife at his throat was sharp. He wasn’t exactly surprised. She didn’t strike him as a person who left her knives unsharpened.

‘I assume this isn’t about the library,’ he said carefully. The ghost of a smile flickered across her face.

‘No it isn’t. Omra said I could trust you, and I hope they aren’t wrong because I am doing something I detest: putting blind faith in a person I don’t know.’

She took a deep breath as if she needed to prepare herself for the next words that would leave her mouth.

‘Echo’s possibly in danger and Omra needs to sort out the mess at the library. Which only leaves you as means to get her out which aren’t illegal.’

Agreeing to go with a complete stranger who was pressing a knife to his throat was definitely not the most smart decision. But this was about Echo. Even if he wanted to, Aeneas didn’t have a choice. And he really, really did not want to see his little sister in danger or harmed.

As he followed Caris through narrow streets and surprisingly filthy alleys, he frowned.

‘There was no burglar at the library, was there?’

‘No. There was me.’

‘And guards who were doing their duty,’ he added, not sure how he felt about the rising suspicion.

When she looked at him, her smile was sinister, but honest.

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘As was I.’


	5. The games of nobles

### Chapter Text

Echo

Leaving her in the entrance hall was either a manoeuvre of sheer brilliance, or the King had forgotten that he had wanted to speak to her. One was as likely as the other.

Echo had never met the King per say. She doubted that many citizens of Arcnara had, safe for some of those belonging to nobility. He had, on occasion, visited the library but Omra had made sure to keep their apprentices away from his majesty as much as possible.

They did not trust nobility to start with and if their fierce protectiveness was anything to go by, then they did not trust their king as far as they could throw him. And Omra didn’t throw people. They could. But they didn’t, as it was too much of a hassle.

For her part, Echo didn’t care very much for his majesty. She didn’t know him, didn’t know how he felt about people like her. Perhaps he was as much an entitled prick as all the other nobles she had met. Or perhaps he was more like her brother’s friend Jonathan: A royal and cold prick in front of many, warm and teasing when he was alone with someone he liked.

Jonathan was a Ruler by name and by oath but not by heart. She doubted he knew that his heart wasn’t in it. To someone born into riches and good standing, running a country apparently did not include growing a backbone and standing for his people. Then again, few Rulers had ever cared. Why was this one supposed to be any different?

Someone laid a hand on her shoulder and violently tore her out of her musings. Their touch was light but firm and when she turned around to look at them, deep red collided with equally deep brown.

‘His Majesty will see you now,’ they drawled, voice filled with as little emotion as their face. They stood up and started walking, expecting Echo to keep up. She did, for she knew that she had no other choice.

The King’s castle was remarkably dark. Black marble and smooth iron dominated the interior, closely followed by deep greens and reds so dark they seemed almost black. The servant leading Echo fit perfectly into the colour scheme as did all others they passed. In her oranges and golds, Echo felt that should the need for fleeing arise, they would capture her within minutes. She stuck out like a sore thumb.

The pair came to a stop before rather large mahogany doors. Very fine golden lines were infused into the wood, forming swords, spears, lances and depicting victorious soldiers. After the servant had knocked and they were bid to enter, they pushed Echo through the now opened doors and then closed them behind her.

Echo swallowed thickly. If she had thought the castle to be slightly scary – a result of the dark interior and oppressive silence – the room she was standing in was positively terrifying. While it was as dark as the rest of the king’s castle, only illuminated by the dim light of candles, it had a more sinister edge to it. Every corner and stone in the wall reeked danger and malice, yet the source of it sat in a silver high chair at the end of a long table.

King Loktur sat his goblet down, intertwined his fingers and let a soft smile grace his features. The fine hairs on Echo’s neck stood up and she suppressed a shudder.

‘Ms Torr, what a delight to finally meet you,’ he purred, waving one hand to the chair on his left. ‘Please, sit.’

She slowly moved forward and did as she was told, though relaxation did not cross her mind for even one second. For all that his smile was soft, it did not reach his eyes, which were an eerie pale green. They were the eyes of a predator, watching, waiting, charming his prey and striking as soon as its guard was down, as soon as it was vulnerable.

‘Are you aware of how interesting your name is, Ms Torr?’

Echo opened her mouth to answer, but he continued talking as if he had never looked at her like he expected her to say something in return.

‘ _Echo_ ,’ he drawled, smacking his lips, testing out how the name tasted in his mouth, ‘Such a intriguing name. I wonder how well it fits you. What were your parents’ thoughts when they named you, my dear? Might you enlighten me?’

‘I am afraid I do not know, your majesty. I was a babe and my knowledge of my parents’ thoughts was quite limited,’ she bit out, trying to keep her voice even and her tone polite. Seeing the skin around his eyes tighten a fraction, she knew she hadn’t quite managed it. Inside she was trembling. If this was what she thought it to be, her head might be separated from her shoulders by the time the last hour of the day ended.

He chuckled and traced the rim of his goblet with one finger in lazy circles.

‘Quite. Let me tell you something, Echo. Your name does not fit you very well.’ He smirked, showing sharp teeth. ‘You are not an echo, as much as you would like to be. You are, for the lack of a better and more dignified term, clumsy. Unprepared, if you will.’

Echo tried to keep her breathing steady and her face impassive, ignoring the pounding in her chest and the rush of blood in her ears that seemed to grow louder with every passing second. Saliva had collected in her mouth but she did not dare swallow. An action like that seemed too loud, too telling. The King was already waiting to pounce and pinned by steadily rising fear and nervousness as she was, she did not know whether she could dodge him if he chose to try and devour her.

‘I know everything that goes on in this world, my world, Ms Torr. One of the few things I pride myself on is knowing that I have incredibly loyal subjects.’ He leaned forward in his chair and sighed, not letting his gaze wander from her figure for one moment.

‘Imagine my surprise,’ he continued, letting venom seep into his voice, ‘when I find out a small duckling has gotten to big for her breeches. What were you trying to accomplish, Echo, recruiting unassuming citizens, good people, for a cause this ridiculous and harmful? Why did you think you could lead a revolution?’

There it was. The reason he had called for her.

He knew. He knew, he knew, he knew, he knew. Those two words circled through Echo’s head, growing louder until they weren’t words at all anymore, but screeches and noises that carried great anguish and fear. She hoped that she was the only one who had been found out. Echo suddenly felt as if someone had doused her in freezing water. If he knew about Caris…

‘Answer me, dearie. What were you trying to accomplish? Answer me!’ he roared, losing all pretence of composure.

It ignited a spark of triumph in Echo’s chest, small and flickering weakly, but bright and red nonetheless.

‘Are you scared, Your Majesty,’ she said hollowly, with no small amount of sick, dark amusement swelling in a pit somewhere in her belly. ‘Scared that they will listen and learn to see with the eyes they have been given by Amira and Kosyr? That they will learn to feel the torture and injustice inflicted on these lands? Do you fear they will demand your tongue for the lies dripping from your lips like Nightwine, or your hands for the blood that you have spilled in order to fill your bathtub?’

By the end of her speech she was panting, eyes wet and blazing. Her cheeks and ears were burning and the brief look of surprise on the King’s face was oil to the flame in her chest, making it climb higher and spread, setting her heart alight.

Silence reigned with an iron fist, her cruelty knowing no mercy as the tension grew thicker in the dining hall. At last, the King’s face scrunched up in a painful grimace before he burst out laughing. Echo’s flame of triumph died almost instantly. He sounded deranged, out of his mind, as if all logic had left to be replaced by a wave of emotion.

 _They say still waters run deep,_ she marvelled, _they never said that wild waters run even deeper in order to hide their secrets._

‘You,’ he wheezed, breaking off into giggles. ‘You have some _nerve_! A backbone. How _delightful_.’

Unsurprisingly, he did not sound delighted at all. Echo thought he looked and sounded more like someone who had bitten into a lemon for the first time and tried to get rid of the taste through spitting. Were it not for the fact that she was becoming more concerned for her life by the minute, she probably would have found the courage to ask him if it worked.

As suddenly as he had broken into maniacal laughter, he recovered and reigned himself in. The dreamy, if unsettling, smile grazing his lips remained.

‘I should cut off your head and watch it roll down Arcnara’s alleys. Or perhaps I should give it to my son as a new ball to kick, as soon as I have removed it from your shoulders.’ He frowned, ‘If I were to do so, I would have to scoop out your eyeballs beforehand. It wouldn’t do for my little boy to be haunted by lifeless eyes at such a young age.’

Echo figured that it didn’t matter what she said anymore. If she had to go down, she would not do so demure and deferential to an insane king.

_To Quitark’s fires with the crown._

‘You’re mad.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps. But that’s besides the point. The real question, dearie, is whether or not you are mad enough to beat me.’

‘Beat you?’ she repeated, startled at what had come out of his mouth.

‘Yes. Beat me,’ he repeated softly.

‘Beat you at what? Ruling? I’d wager I could beat you within an hour.’

He chose to ignore the last part. ‘Why at a game of course! Let us call it a life sized, rather prolonged version of chess.’ He was grinning like a madman, green eyes alight with the kind of joy that made even the most cruel mercenaries run for cover. Or more weapons.

‘You see, I enjoy a good game of chess here and there. Unfortunately, there are tragically few good players left in Arcnara. Most of them have been humiliated and annihilated by me already. And I can only beat so many strategists on a board until it becomes boring, don’t you agree?’

‘No, no, I think this is far better,’ he said. ‘As slighted as I am by your little would-be-revolution, I also think it amusing. After all, having someone try to bring back such a dangerous thing as magic is something new and exciting. I give you a choice: either your head will roll by morrow, as will those of your companions, starting with your brother. Or you will play this game determining the world’s fate with me. I will leave you alone…mostly. I’ll let you gather support, if there is any, and people for your side. You may try to achieve whatever it is you hope for, and you’ll most likely choke on your own guts and blood doing so.’

‘Why?’

He looked taken aback for a split second.

‘Well, because someone’ll slice you open from groin to throat and…’

‘No! No, not, not _that_.’ Echo grimaced. Bile rose in her throat but she swallowed it down. The taste was atrocious but the water in the goblet in front of her did not promise relief. She remembered her grandmother’s words: sugar and salt do not differ much in appearance, and neither do people with good and bad intentions. ‘Why this offer?’

‘I think it would be a waste to kill you without seeing how far you could go.’

She narrowed her eyes at him, purposely lacing her voice with as much disdain as she was able to.

‘Horse shite.’

‘My, my, how unbecoming of a lady.’

‘I’m no lady. I’m one of the librarian’s apprentices, I know more about Gynasou’s history and customs than you. That’s probably not very hard, seeing as you think that being a lady doesn’t include swearing.’

‘And these customs involve being disrespectful to your betters? To your King?’

‘If the King’s a dick, then yes,’ she bit out. She had had enough.

Much to her chagrin, he seemed to find pleasure in their little verbal sparring session.

‘And I am a dick?’

‘I doubt you need my perceptiveness to know the answer to that, Your Majesty. So what’s the real reason you’re offering?’

‘I did not lie,’ he hummed, taking a golden knife in hand and idly playing with it. ‘But I was not truthful either. Did it occur to you, dearie, that I merely enjoy toying with my food?’

‘What, did your parents never teach you table side manners?’ She was tempted to mirror his actions. Yet no matter how invitingly, how warm the golden cutlery gleamed in the low candlelight, she felt that it was losing its appeal rather quickly. The longer this game went on between them, the more she felt like a bird trapped in a cage, desperately flapping her wings to escape prettily painted iron bars. Or, in this case, the fingers of someone who would lay his hands on her throat and squeeze without a second thought.

The King let out a long suffering sigh, the knife slipping out of his grasp as he leaned forward to fix her in place with a glare. ‘Enough chit chat, dearie,’ he growled. ‘Your choice. Take me up on my offer and we’ll play, or decline and I’ll send for your brother so that he may be given a show when I’m done deciding which parts of you go where after I’ve cut them off.’

Echo could see it before her mind’s eye: The blood and the horrors this game would bring. _Game_. She scoffed internally. What a horrible name, so insignificant, so unfitting. This, if it came to pass, would be anything but a game. It would be tears and rubble, fires and ash, screams and actions filled with desperation. It would be second guessing and manipulation, lies and the shattering and remaking of souls, lands and bodies alike. In short, it would be gruesome.

Her mind flickered to the people in the third and fourth district of Arcnara. To Lu, who had gutted three guards for not coming to aid her child when another guard had raped them. They had taken three of her teeth, three fingers and three toes in return and told her to be grateful she wasn’t being hung from the small chapel at the corner of Miller Street.

She thought of Morak, a boy of seven, who had been forced to go past the shields and into the woods in search of medicine for his sick brothers and father. He had never returned. A week after his disappearance guards had carried his family’s corpses from their hut. The people of the lower districts had come together, lain trinkets at the entrance of the hut and burned Widow’s Cry, a flower with blossoms as blue as the sky.

Echo thought of the graves that littered the chapel at Millers Street, and how, when the space had run out after a while, they had begun to burn the dead and bury the ashes in the ground with a prayer to Andrápodon, so that he may take care of his new charges. And how every time, without fail, Widow’s Cry had bloomed and made a home in the ashes. She thought of Omra, how they looked alarmed every time guards came into the library, armed and stoic. Omra, who had told her that while it was a noble cause, bringing down the shields, it was also a dangerous idea to have. Caris, who risked her life every single day she played kind and dumb in a palace full of people who would kill her in a heartbeat if they found out who she was and what she was capable of.

So these were the games of the nobles. Fights and bets, war and ruin. As long as it harmed anyone but them, they called it a game.

Anger exploded within her, a bright and hot inferno, all consuming and merciless. It burned behind her eyes and made her jaw tighten to the point it became painful. She stood.

‘You might find yourself regretting this, Your Majesty.’

He only raised one eyebrow, a smirk splitting his face in two and showing his teeth. ‘Oh? No promises? Does your spirit not house any fight?’

‘I seldom make promises in the throes of anger, for there may come a time when I have to uphold my word and then I would have to be less cruel than I might wish to be.’ She bowed shallowly. ‘Good night Your Majesty.’

A servant escorted Echo outside, past the gates and then left her to her own devices. She was trembling, something that might have been either a sob or a scream climbing up her throat. Someone pulled her into the darkness of the night and strong arms before her knees gave out.


	6. Elementals, Connected, Mer and Pecagi

Aeneas

If there was one way he had imagined spending his evening, following a possible killer through the dark and nearly walking into a tree had definitely not been it. But here he was anyways.

He was glad that, despite not having any light to guide him, he wasn’t left to stumble around aimlessly. Light would have made them draw unwanted attention to themselves, according to Caris, and really, those were unfair words from someone who apparently had no trouble seeing in the dark. At least her hair shone bright enough for him to follow her without any difficulty.

_Small mercies._

Had it stopped him from almost walking into a tree and tripping over five different roots? No, not at all.

Also, they were stumbling through the woods in order to get to the King’s castle. Who could possibly see them? No one in their right mind would be out in the woods when darkness had already fallen to claim the realm for another night. The woods were being avoided by most people in general. Aeneas went occasionally, mostly to collect herbs or stones for the healing chambers. But really, apart from him, other healers, researchers and some foolish teenagers with more alcohol and courage than brains, nobody ever dared to venture out into the woods. It was dangerous. Especially since Gynasou’s shields only reached the main roads. As soon as someone went too deep or misstepped, they were on their own.

‘You didn’t kill them, did you?’ Aeneas couldn’t help it, he had to ask. He didn’t like the idea of Echo running around with someone who had little qualms about killing. Perhaps a little hypocritical, as he was running around with said person, but he wasn’t doing it for fun. Which reminded him that he would have to ask Echo about her questionable relationship to the woman guiding him through the woods.

She hummed in return. ‘The guards? No, they are alive and mostly well.’

‘Mostly?’ Aeneas ducked, narrowly avoiding having one of his eyes poked out by a low hanging branch. He wanted to ask her what she meant by that. However, he did’t get the chance to.

Caris had stopped walking and held up a hand. She turned to him, lifting one finger to her lips and shaking her head slightly. Aeneas understood and remained rooted to the spot, listening intently to what was going on.

Around the unlikely pair, the world had fallen silent. Short of their breathing, not a sound could be heard. Birds had fallen silent and the leaves of the trees had stopped shaking without any wind to aid them.

‘We need to go,’ Caris whispered, and when Aeneas looked at her, her eyes were bright with fear. ‘Now!’

‘Wait,’ he began to say, but Caris had already taken his hand to pull him along and broken into a stride, winding through branches and roots without tripping once. Aeneas wasn’t as fortunate, continuing to stumble and nearly fall. Finally, he’d had enough. Digging his feet into the ground, he wrenched his hand out of Caris’ surprisingly strong grip. ‘I said _wait_.’

Aeneas quickly realised that this had been the wrong thing to do. While Caris did indeed stop, she whirled around – quite obviously angered – the exact moment he managed to break free from her grasp. He hadn’t anticipated that and reeled back, tripping over his own feet in the process and managing to catch himself on a small but sturdy tree. This was ridiculous. He had half a mind to tell her to please listen and not just pull him along, but the terror in the grey eyes made him pause.

‘Aeneas,’ she said, her voice shaking, gaze flickering between him and a lone tree a few metres in front of him. ‘You need to get back here, fast.’

He found that he neither had the will nor the energy to try and argue, so he just nodded and stood up. A split second later he felt it; the shift around him. Sounds found their way through the silence, a quiet, yet insistent, crackling creeping up behind him. The hairs on his arms stood on end and he suppressed a shiver. The noise reminded him suspiciously of joints popping and bones breaking. Whatever this was, it was highly dangerous and he fancied himself alive a lot more than dead.

He pushed himself up just in time to pull his foot away from something cold and solid. The crackling grew louder, demanding to be heard and to not be shoved aside. Dread uncoiled in his chest and he started running. He had just gotten past the tree when the crackling abruptly died down. Aeneas was panting even though the run had not tired him out. Caris was still staring at the spot he had been moments before and following her gaze, he nearly felt like falling to his knees.

Before them, a translucent wall reached from the very ground high up into the sky, beyond the crowns of the still trees. It faintly shimmered red in the darkness, coiling and wavering as if alive. The movements were almost fluid in motion. As impressive and alien a vision it was, it was not what drew Aeneas attention and ultimately, his shock. Thick grey smoke beat against the wall, drawing back and launching itself forward time and time again. It surged upward into the trees on its side of the wall, beating against it helplessly, yet no less ferocious. The ground, plants, branches, everything it had touched was various shades of gleaming grey and brown.

Aeneas squinted. All of it looked distinctly like…

‘Stone.’ He looked at Caris, who was shaking and clenching her fists. She opened her mouth a few times without saying anything, then took a deep breath and returned his gaze. ‘What you’re looking at is stone. And of course,’ she gestured weakly to the glimmering shield between them and the rest of the forest, ‘Gynasou’s barrier.’ Caris bit her lip. There was a far away look in her eyes, the grey darkened and clouded over as if the unrelenting smoke on the other side had taken up residence in it.

Aeneas, still trembling, reached out to her. ‘Are you okay?’

Her head snapped to the side so fast he feared she might give herself whiplash. Lips twitching in a poorly disguised attempt not to break into probably hysterical laughter, she shook her head at him. ‘Not really. Are you?’ she asked in return, trying, which in this case involved failing, to keep her voice steady and reassuring.

‘Not really. What the actual fuck was that?’

She hummed. ‘The reason most people don’t go out at night. Nobody’s made an effort to mark the barrier’s edges in a long time.’

‘I thought once you’re past the barriers you can’t come back?’

‘ _You_ can,’ she sighed bitterly, ‘You’re human. The barriers weren’t designed to keep humans in or out. Your kind can go wherever it pleases.’

_My kind? Oh…_

His eyes widened briefly. Really, he should have noticed sooner. Or maybe he would have, had he not been busy running for his life.

‘Elementals, Connected, Mer and Pecagi…they can’t get out, can they? Once they’re inside.’ For a second he wondered whether he should go there. Then again, Aeneas rarely kept his mouth shut when there were important things to be said. ‘If you were to accidentally wander in there, you wouldn’t get out anymore, would you, Caris?’

She chuckled. It was a dark sound, biting and angry. ‘Quick on the uptake. No, I wouldn’t get out anymore. Neither would an animal with a connection to their country’s magic.’ She shook herself, once, twice, before scoffing and turning away from the still shimmering shield. ‘Come on. We need to find Echo, hopefully in one piece.’

Something ugly reared its head in Aeneas’ chest when she said that, hot and painful, digging its way into his heart and lungs. He kept up with her the rest of the way, careful not to fall behind. ‘We weren’t taught much about the shields when we were younger, Echo and I.’

Caris cut him off. ‘They are _not_ shields,’ she hissed.

Levelling her back with a calm stare, Aeneas took a deep breath. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I suppose they aren’t. Like I said, we weren’t taught much about them. But we were told they exist to protect us, all of us.’ He thought back to the smoke and the noises past the shield. ‘Don’t they?’

‘I better explain this to you with Omra, once we have Echo back.’ He didn’t get more answers than that. Thinking of meeting Omra made him shudder, both in fear and delight. The librarian was almost as much fun to rile up as John, though they generally fought back with more than just words. They had actually screeched at Aeneas once, when he’d pestered them about how Echo was holding up, and had hit him with books and the rather sharp end of their pencils and quills until he’d fled.

‘All you need to know for now is that these barriers have been bringing nothing but doom and ruin ever since that fool of a human erected them.’

It was his turn not to say anything in return.

_But what do you say when someone confronts you with something like this anyways?_

Aeneas shook his head to chase the thought away. Right now, the most important thing was making sure his baby sister wasn’t hurt. Because if she was, Aeneas couldn’t be held accountable for a brash assassination attempt on the King.

In the end, finding Echo was easier than anticipated. She was passed out in the arms of one fuming librarian, who, if looks could kill, would have put the unlikely pair staggering out of the woods six feet underground. Aeneas didn’t receive an answer when he asked how Omra had gotten there so quickly.  
  


Aeneas felt like sobbing and laughing at the same time. It was a strange mixture of desperation and relief that coiled and uncoiled in his chest without regard to how much the dance of those two emotions burned him from the inside out. He took a deep breath, one hand flat on his chest to ground himself, the other buried in his hair. If he had to decide where on his scale of shit days this one placed, it would be high up. He sighed, straightening in the leather chair he’d been directed to when Caris and Omra had begun to fuss over Echo. The fact that they had not let him, the apprentice of an actual healer, check his sister over merely because he had looked out of it, left a bitter taste in his mouth.

He wasn’t quite sure what time it was. Perhaps he had been down here, beneath the library, for a few minutes, perhaps for a few hours. He found that it didn’t matter, not really. Because what his baby sister had just told him was either a very elaborate and cruel joke, or she’d just confessed to treason.

‘Nas?’ His lips twitched. Back when she’d been barely able to walk around and follow whomever she wanted to talk an ear off that day, she had’t been able to say his name. She’d only ever called him by that ridiculous nickname. He adored it.

She sounded so nervous, as if she feared his reaction. Which, granted, she probably did. And didn’t that make him feel bad. His little sister feared his reaction to the secret she’d been carrying around with her for Yu knows how long. He swallowed. Unbeknownst to her, he was afraid too, though for an entirely different reason. He feared for her life, his mind split in two; one part tried to stay in the present and prepare for the conversation he was about to have, the other one was coming up with names and faces of people who could have known and ratted her out to His Majesty.

‘Nas?’ she asked again, less nervous and more concerned this time. He looked up, studying her for a few moments. He’d often been told that his eyes had this shine to them, sharp and knowing. Blessed by the stars, as an old woman in fourth had told him once, when he’d brought her food. Echo had a shine to her eyes too, though different from his. While his was silver, her eyes had an almost coppery red gleam to them. Aeneas personally thought of it as her inner fire coming through whenever she was incredibly determined or angry. If he was blessed by the stars, she was blessed by the sun.

‘Yeah, I’m okay Echo,’ he croaked, giving her a weak smile and a thumbs up.

She snorted, shaking her head. ‘You don’t look it.’

‘Well, the news that my sister is leading an underground rebellion aren’t exactly easy to swallow.’ He grinned at her. ‘You just had to cook something up that goes down with as much difficulty as possible.’

‘You know me, I never do things by halves. What’s it taste like?’

Seeing his chance, he threw himself back into his chair with as much drama as he could muster, draping himself over it. ‘Like betrayal,’ he wailed playfully, pushing down the urge to grin at her, ‘and heartbreak. My sister, my own flesh and blood, keeping me out of the loop! I fear my soul shall never mend again. Your distrust cut too deep.’

‘Oh really?’ There was a challenge in her words, laced with mischief. She stood up, walked over and promptly sat down on his stomach, seemingly unbothered when he spluttered. ‘I’ll just have to use bodily force until you feel my honest regret then.’

‘You little shit.’

‘Hmm, I had the best teacher.’

They spent a few moments in silence, listening to the far away whispers of Caris and Omra. The siblings couldn’t make out what was being said but they didn’t mind all that much.

‘Echo? Just so I got all of this right: you started an underground rebellion against the crown here in Arcnara to…what? Fuck with the King? Usurp him?’

Echo shook her head slowly, gaze finding Caris and Omra, who chose this exact moment to enter. It had been a few months since Aeneas had last come face to face with Omra, but they hadn’t changed much. They still looked like they were close to their fifties, they still wore the feathered coat that made them look bigger than they were and their eyes were still large and yellow. And they still had the same grumpy expression. However, they looked more relaxed standing next to Caris, who’d freed her hair from the ponytail it had been subjected to.

‘It’s about more than that, Nas. You know about the shields we were told of by mum and dad? I came across some books a good long while ago that described the shields as a barbaric abuse of magic and the natural flow between the lands of Nuerma.’

Aeneas raised an eyebrow, knowing where this was going. ‘And you dug deeper.’

‘Yeah, I did. At first I was just curious. With time and enough research, I grew horrified. I still am. It doesn’t matter how many times I read about the process or the price of creating these barriers, it still makes me nauseous.’She’d gotten a glazed look in her eyes. Shaking her head, she gestured to the stone around them, and for the first time since he had been led down here, Aeneas actually looked. The stone was old, lovingly decorated and drawn on with dark paint. The way it arched and bent at certain angles was found in few buildings, most of them now ruined or forgotten, left to decay. It was a temple, or at least, the remains of one. ‘I discovered this by accident, when I was looking for some dusting supplies one day. And here, I found some scrolls and old tomes.’ She fidgeted. ‘And I got found out by Omra.’

They chuckled in response. ‘You weren’t subtle. I admit though, that I thought you were preparing to steal some of my books at first.’

‘I panicked and spilled. They laughed at me when I’d told them all of it and began teaching me. About magic, the differences between our races, the barriers. And I, I started seeing every single unjust thing that’s been going on in Arcnara. The way the people in the lower districts are treated, the looks of fear in the eyes of so many whenever there’s a guard nearby, the indifference of the upper districts. I wanted it to change, all of it.’

‘Okay.’ He nodded slowly, then frowned. ‘And the barriers?’ He noted the satisfied look in Caris’ eyes.

They are _not_ shields.

He remembered her words, how angry she had looked, and how pained.

Echo briefly looked unsure before she straightened up and ah, there it was. The glint in her eyes, her inner flame ignited. _Let’s hear it then._

‘The barriers were probably meant to protect.’

A snort came from Caris’ direction, her eyes steely. Echo didn’t stop, despite the small interruption.

‘They didn’t. They don’t. What they do, is separate the lands from one another. Nuerma is one giant connection of magic. Izmet, Liranae, Gynasou, Flokul, Kaszna, Balei…every single country has its own individual magic, but they merge at the borders. It’s a connection, an exchange of energy and magic. It keeps everything alive and well.’ She grimaced. ‘Mostly.’

Aeneas looked away, cursing under his breath as he caught on. ‘And the connections are severed. Because of the barriers.’ He looked at Caris, the anger welling up in him transforming it into a glare, though it wasn’t directed at her. He hoped she would know that. ‘The smoke. Is that a consequence of some sort?’

Caris nodded. ‘We don’t know how bad it is in the other countries. The few allies we managed to secure in the other capitals either don’t want to go anywhere near the barriers, or they don’t know. But in Gynasou, it’s the smoke. It turns everything it touches to stone.’

‘According to the scrolls, it only touched animals and people with magic at first. They became stone if they came into contact with the smoke, but only during the night. When dawn came, they were free. But over the years…it became worse, more angry. It touches everything now, and recently, only plants and trees have been allowed to escape their prisons come dawn. We fear that soon, it won’t matter anymore. Whatever it touches will turn to stone and remain stone. And the smoke isn’t content with staying where the blood of the caster is embedded into the earth. It’ll spread as soon as it’s strong enough,’ Omra said gravely. They seemed to have aged a few years during their little lesson.

‘And you want to reverse it. Is that even possible?’ Aeneas felt numb as he asked. This was a lot to take in, but his mind had chosen to fixate on another revelation entirely.

He had asked himself who could have known, who could have ratted Echo out. Perhaps the person who was responsible hadn’t known at all.

‘We don’t know. But we need to try. And now that the King insisted on this, this game,’ Echo spat the words out, ‘we have as good an opportunity as we’ll ever get.’ She turned to him, the fire in her eyes dimmed down to a gentle glow. As she regarded him, her eyebrows pinched together. ‘Nas? Aeneas? Are you alright?’

He wasn’t. Now that he thought about it, the answer was easy. His friend had probably not meant anything by it, fuck, Jonathan hadn’t known his words could do any harm. But Aeneas had joked about Echo’s obsession with books and scrolls of any subject or language a while ago. And if Jonathan, who regularly found himself in audiences with the King, had dropped that particular bit of information and added his own thoughts to it…well. It was bound to catch His Majesty’s attention or caution, if nothing else.

_Fuck._


	7. Flowers bloom in doubt and greed

Caris

The week after the unfortunate incident with the King and Echo – if only Caris did not have to maintain a cover, because she thirsted for blood, preferably the blood of a certain noble – was a quiet one. Their little group of four, since Aeneas had made abundantly clear that he was not about to ignore any of what had happened, did their best to lay low and prepare.

Echo had decided to venture through Gynasou and find support. She would, of course, take Aeneas with her. So the two of them did their best to prepare and pack. Omra and Caris would have been able to accompany them on the Royal Road but they chose not to. It would be suspicious to travel with them in the beginning and then return to Arcnara alone. Additionally, Omra had to make sure their ducklings were taking care of themselves and Caris was still a spy. The two of them would stay in Arcnara, take care of the small group of people dedicated to their cause and try to act normal.

Keeping a low profile and not drawing attention to themselves was easier for Caris than it was for any of the others. Years of practice, she supposed. Then again, nobody ever dared to stare at her or even breathe in her direction wrong when they saw her. Her reputation preceded her, and for once, she was thankful for it.

Right now, overseeing the training of the guard, she took no small amount of glee from it. How many times had she heard vile things from the mouths of these quivering soldiers before her? How many times had they joked about the best method to kill a magical being?

Now they did not even dare to look at her. Of course, they did not know what she was, but they knew that she was one of the King’s advisors. Officially anyways. In truth she was a silent executioner and at least 2/3 of them knew it. She regarded them with a calculating gaze.

‘Being part of His Majesty’s guard is an unfathomable honour. Are you aware of that?’

‘Aye, madam!’

She nodded, strolling down the rows of soldiers clad in red and black garb.

‘As you should. Arcnara’s guard have protected this city and its people for generations. They marched into battle alongside our most beloved Ruler and King, Viktor of Kaserra.’ She paused, pushing down the rage and disgust at herself when she uttered those words until it dulled. Her voice never faltered when she spoke of the raids but she despised talking about them as if they were some great accomplishment. Keeping up appearances was a downright bitch. To make up for it, she fantasised about seeing the King bleed out beneath her feet. It was a nice distraction from the faces of those she had had to put down at the King’s orders. Caris hoped that those faces would vanish with time. They hadn’t yet.

Before Echo, Omra and the rebellion of Arcnara, she had joined the castle’s staff in hopes of assassinating the King some day. It hadn’t taken long for her to abandon that notion, though. If she killed the King, she would be hung, another would step up, and Nuerma would still continue to fall apart at its seams.

She had hope now. Hope and fierce determination, burning brighter than the phoenix birds of Flokul her mother used to tell her about.

Perhaps the stories about her were true. She might be a little bit cruel. And right now, the words and jeers of these people echoing through her head, she delighted in their fear.

‘The guard protected us against forces beyond our imagination and brought glory and security, safety. I am here to make sure you know what shoes you have to fill. I will not go easy on you, and I’ll not be kind. Now,’ she called out, turning and clapping her hands together, ‘let us get to work.’

As promised, she was ruthless, running the soldiers through kicks, punches and the proper way to swing a sword. Training them took the better part of her day but she found that she did not mind all that much. It was a welcome distraction. No games, no long runs, no meticulously thought out strategies. Just action and reaction.

Caris bit her lip and started to lightly chew on it. This wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as she was. This was enemy terrain, she was training the enemy. Every breath she took began to burn wetly. What was she doing, thinking, showing them the most effective ways to kill or subdue someone?

She shook her head at herself. This was ridiculous. She was doing her job and her best, gathering intel and maintaining a fragile cover. Her position required much of her. And as much as she disliked it, it included training soldiers.

‘Madam?’

Sikan approached her, coming to a stop five metres before her. His right hand balled into a fist and he placed it over his heart before moving it to his forehead and bowing his head. The traditional greeting of warriors in Gynasou. Nobody knew where it hailed from but soldiers had been greeting and seeing each other off like that for centuries.

She mirrored his movements. ‘Sikan. What is it?’

‘I would like to talk about something important from a while back, Madam. If you can make time for me. I would not want to impose,’ he said, voice neutral. His face didn’t betray any emotions either, though if one looked carefully, they would be able to spot hesitation in his eyes. They were a dark blue, closer to what Caris imagined was the colour of the sea.

She’d never seen the sea, so she wouldn’t really know. Gynasou had no lakes but quite a few rivers. From what she’d been told, however, they were crystal clear, showcasing their treasures.

Her own eyes narrowed. She knew what he was referring to. What she didn’t know was why he wanted to talk about it. It would be better for him if he kept his head down and his mouth shut about it, but if he wanted to talk about it so badly then fine. She would indulge him. Hear what he had to say wouldn’t hurt her. Hopefully.

‘Very well. We are done for today anyways,’ she said cooly, turning away from him to address the crowd of sweating and exhausted soldiers still trading punches. ‘Alright, pack it up. Well done for today, we’ll work on your endurance tomorrow. Clark, Abbey, don’t think I didn’t see you groan. Keep that up and you’ll be doing an extra set.’ She was met with affirmative murmurs and a slowly clearing training space. She turned back to Sikan, whose hulking form hadn’t moved an inch.

Caris’ lips twitched. She had seen the undisguised hunger and awe in some of the soldiers’ gazes when they had watched Sikan train. Objectively she could understand: he was young, not even 28, well trained, and good looking, all tanned skin and golden brown hair. Subjectively speaking, he was not her type: He was a man.

She beckoned him to follow her and led him to a secluded spot in the gardens near the training grounds. They wouldn’t be disturbed here, or at least she hoped so. She loved it here, next to all sorts of colourful flowers and merry butterflies.

‘Now,’ she said, as they sat opposite of each other on the grass, ‘what would you like to ask me? I would like you to be honest with me, and I will do the same.’ Her voice was clipped, neither kind nor unkind, but notably softer than when she’d addressed the guards. But she couldn’t let her guard down. This could, after all, still be a trap. She’d found that no matter how honest people seemed, few were above playing dirty when it came down to it.

_And they call us monsters…_

Sikan nodded but stayed quiet for a little while, catching her gaze and staring her down. Blue and grey met in a battle of will, neither giving up or backing down. Finally, Sikan relented. Whatever he had sought, he had either found or it wasn’t urgent enough for him to continue his search.

‘I burned him, let the wind carry off his ashes,’ he said softly, voice quivering a little as if he regretted his actions. ‘It’s what we do in Izmet.’

Caris had been prepared for direct questions and even insults thrown her way so his quiet confession startled her. She didn’t say anything and waited for him to continue. Despite of what most servants thought, she wasn’t able to read minds. She was just good at reading body language.

‘I don’t know if it was the right thing to do. Your traditions mostly still elude me. I would hate for his soul to have moved on without a proper burial though. So I sent him off my own way.’ Sikan wasn’t looking at her anymore, his eyes trained on the soft grass beneath his hands.

‘More merciful than what your companions would have subjected his corpse to,’ Caris drawled. Her heart was pounding uncomfortably fast in her chest. She didn’t know what to say, what to do with this information. The Elemental’s face flickered before her mind’s eye and she pushed down the urge to squeeze her eyes shut. ‘You believe in souls lingering then?’

_What game are you playing Sikan? What are you trying to accomplish with this?_

He shrugged, his accent thicker when he spoke again. ‘Don’t you? When our people die, Ciar takes them to the realms of one of our gods, If we burn them, they go to Zahra or Tuuli. Some of our people die in the snow, or drown while hunting. They go to Jökull or Mura.’ He was smiling softly, his entire face alight with pride for his people and traditions. But the light vanished and his face fell faster than Caris wanted it to. Glimpses of pure, innocent joy were so incredibly hard to come by when you had to fake it all day long. ‘But,’ he said, fingers clenching in the grass, ‘when a soul is not seen off with the proper rights, a vigil, something…they will escape Ciar’s sight and his lamp. They’ll be forced to linger in the darkness, alone and unseen by both worlds.’ Tears were welling up in the blue pools and Sikan sounded as if it pained him to tell the tale of forgotten souls. He took a shaky breath. ‘There is no worse fate. Being alone and forgotten, unable to find peace or escape the darkness you were abandoned in.’

Caris reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder but pulled it back before she made contact with him. She gnawed on her lip again, willing the knots in her chest and squeezing her heart to disappear. Words would have to do.

‘Whomever he worshipped, I’m sure the fire made him burn bright enough for Ciar to find him.’

Sikan’s eyes crinkled in a wordless smile. ‘Where do your dead go?’

It was as if someone had doused Caris in ice cold water, or woken her up from a pleasant dream. She froze, the spell broken. This was the part where she stood on cracked glass above a chasm. One wrong step, too much weight on one particular area, and she was sure to fall to her death. Every scrap of survival instincts she had perfected – and occasionally ignored – over the years was screaming at her that this was a test, a trap.

She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Our dead go to Viktor, the protector, the Ruler and King who brought us safety and glory beyond measure.’

Sikan stiffened. ‘Don’t those words taste like acid in your mouth?’ he hissed. ‘You asked for honesty, it’s all I ask for in return!’ When she did not relent, he sighed, changing his approach.

‘We have a saying at home: Flowers bloom in doubt and greed. They don’t know whether the sun will help them grow, or whether there will be enough water and soil for them all. But they push through regardless. Izmet’s flowers have strong roots. Long too, they take up much space. There’s no compassion for late bloomers or delicate flowers. The strongest, or the most fortunate, take all they can for a chance that nature will favour them.’ He looked at her, a silent plea in his eyes. ‘ Do you bloom in desperation and fear instead?’

Heat shot through her, jagged and scorching, prodding her in the most vulnerable places and climbing her throat for a chance to escape. She could feel the grass ball together where her hands were clenched in it, could feel it creeping and tickling her palms as it pushed up in a demand to be given freedom. The ground beneath it reacted to her anger, rumbling and pushing. It was subtle enough that she hoped he didn’t notice.

‘Listen here and listen well,’ she hissed, leaning towards him. ‘You want to heed those words? You want to bloom? Bloom in greed, but do not dare to even think of blooming in doubt. Have you forgotten that you are part of the King’s guard? A soldier? It is no place for weakness! If the King so much as senses an ounce of disloyalty in you, a smidge of doubt, you will wish for his hand and not for mine. Because I will tear you limb from limb and make you crave Ciar’s embrace.’

She stood up, trembling, and looked down at him with cold eyes. ‘Get up.’

He rose hesitantly, but his eyes were as cold as hers. Baring his teeth in a horrible grimace that would not pass for a smile if he was the only person left in the world who could move his mouth, he snarled at her. ‘Where do your dead go?’

‘Our dead go to…’

‘Where do _your_ dead go, _Caris_?’

‘Nowhere. And I killed the Elemental because I was ordered to. So don’t think I’ll be able to do anything else but slit your throat if you don’t stay in line, Sikan.’ It was a clear dismissal, or as clear as it could get without being rude.

The soldier didn’t seem to grasp the concept of a polite dismissal.

‘I wondered what kind of monster would look at a human being and kill them for what they are and can’t change,’ he muttered, sounding defeated, but no less heated.

Caris chuckled darkly. ‘I trust you have found your answer. You are dismissed, soldier. Don’t be late for training tomorrow.’

She slumped over, raking her fingers through her hair as soon as he was out of sight. It took her five minutes to get her breathing under control, and an additional two to get rid of the urge to punch something. She giggled weakly, the sounds escaping her throat high pitched and more wet than dry.

‘Well that was a disaster.’

Caris stayed in the gardens until her legs fell asleep and her body ached from staying in one position too long. She couldn’t find the energy to move or to untangle the mess of emotions inside her.

Half of her was yelling at herself for losing control, and that she shouldn’t feel guilty for having slit the Elemental’s throat. The boy had been broken already, made into a perfect marionette. Had she not killed him swiftly, she would have been ordered to play with him like a cat played with her prey. It had been a mercy killing, she wasn’t…she wasn’t as bad as him.

The other half of her was scoffing. She’d killed him without a second thought and had just chased off a possible ally within the guard. And for what? The chance that Sikan wasn’t sincere? Echo had had no reason to trust her either, and she’d still done it. So why, why did Caris have to chase off every single person who didn’t approach her with malice right off the boat?

She sighed and shook her head at herself, strands of white falling into her eyes. It didn’t matter right now. She would keep an eye on Sikan, figure out whether he could be trusted with something as delicate as a rebellion. If he proved himself to be, well. She still owed him her honesty.


	8. Siren song, interrupted

### Chapter Text

Jonathan

It was a downright terrible day, and that was not only due to the fact that Jonathan had had to work through a unfairly high stack of papers. Firstly, it had been raining for the better part of the day, meaning Jonathan was unable to leave the palace. This meant that he’d also had to reschedule his meeting with a merchant guild from Liranae, who wanted to settle in Arcnara.

Secondly, the stack on papers in front of him did not seem to diminish. Training reports – mostly complains about continued cheating despite previously given warnings – and official pleads for Caris Vandor to be offered a position as a full time trainer for the guard littered his desk along with the occasional letter of another Ruler or their scholars. On a normal day Jonathan would have worked through the papers quickly and effortlessly. But this wasn’t a normal day. Jonathan couldn’t seem to concentrate, his mind straying from the ink on the pages and instead following invisible beacons of light and warmth to shapeless worlds of blurry colours and lullabies. His fingers tapped on the wood of his desk as he hummed along to long forgotten melodies. It was a strange mixture stuck in his head, comparable to no tune he’d ever heard in Gynasou, much less its capital.

From what he’d heard of it, Gynasounian music was high tunes and merry laughter combined with sharp turns and drops. Vocals were sometimes hard and carried strength in them; unmovable, steady, energising. All in all it brought a smile to Jonathan’s face whenever he heard it. He’d always been a fan of music. It was his way of escaping into these shapeless worlds that had been haunting him forever. As a kid Jonathan had been fond of sitting outside the whole day, listening to any and all songs that people sung throughout their day. He’d written down what they’d reminded him off and kept his journals in a chest under his bed, locking it every night when the moon stood high and unlocking it every day at sunrise, greeting the world with high expectations and a heart full of curiosity.

Jonathan smiled fondly, remembering his own eagerness to capture every tune his small world had to offer. Of course, back then he’d thought that there wasn’t much more to the world than the colourful, curiously shaped houses and buildings of Arcnara, so after a few years he’d stopped unlocking his chest the mornings, believing himself to have heard and collected every tune, melody and word. He had been oh so very wrong. There were more songs to collect and describe than he’d known.

Shaking his head, Jonathan abandoned the papers on his desk. He grinned, moving around his office and whistling while scanning the rows of leather bound books and ornamental journals on the walls. He found what he was looking for on the last shelf. It was a small journal, bound in red leather with black fish stamped into it. Inside the journal were dried flowers and delicate wings of small insects he’d found dead on his window pane when he was young. The grin vanished from Jonathan’s lips.

‘Hm, and to think I almost forgot about you,’ he muttered, one finger hovering above the wings of what had once undoubtedly been a ruby bee. His neighbours had caught one once, when they’d ventured out into the woods and destroyed a nest. On accident, they had said. Now that Jonathan was twenty five, he felt like smacking himself when he thought back on how he’d believed them so easily. They’d stood in front of him covered in glinting remains of the nest they’d trampled, red honey smeared around their fingers and lips, a mad glint in their eyes and black and red remains of bees clinging to their boots. They had shown him the ruby bee they’d caught, trapped in a glass. It had moved around in a desperate flutter of wings, trying to get to its already dead brethren.

Back then, Jonathan had simply been awed by the appearance of the bee. Now he felt disgusted. How could he feel awe when the poor thing had clearly been in agony and afraid? One day, while he’d been sitting outside under a tree, once again lost in his shapeless worlds and humming tunes that eluded him when he was fully himself, one of his neighbours had joined him, a dazed look on his face. Jonathan didn’t fully remember what had happened, but next thing he knew his neighbour had nodded and walked back to his house. There’d been the sound of shattering glass, a scream, a curse and a cry. The ruby bee had landed on Jonathan’s knee and stayed there for a while. He didn’t remember why it had died.

Jonathan’s face scrunched up in a bitter grimace. ‘What kind of weirdo keeps the wings of dead animals?’ He said that as if he was fully prepared to throw the wings in question away. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried to do so multiple times, but some part of him always balked at the very notion of letting go of his treasures. ‘I guess I do. My kind of weirdo does that,’ he said, sounding resigned.

Jonathan was sure he would have spend hours going through his old journal, savouring each word and re experiencing the joy these songs had always inspired in him, if it wasn’t for the knock on his office door. He frowned. ‘Enter.’

One of his personal servants, Akta, came in and bowed so deeply Jonathan feared Akta’s nose would soon touch his knees. When the man made no move to resume his original position, Jonathan shook his head. ‘Straighten up Akta, and tell me why you are here.’

Akta hesitated, eyes flickering about the room and looking everywhere but at Jonathan. It made the Ruler set his journal aside, diverting all of his attention to the nervous man before him. Jonathan was fond of Akta, had been since he arrived at the palace and was proclaimed Ruler. Akta had devoted his life to jewellery and gemstones, was one of the most sought after jewellers northeast of the Sapphire Meadows. He was the one attending Jonathan every morning and every evening, making sure to choose the appropriate rings, necklaces and the likes for every outfit and event. And he complained quietly whenever he had to drape Jonathan in heavy necklaces and rings almost too wide for his long fingers. Akta always said Jonathan looked uncomfortable in them. As if they were two times too small and were cutting of his blood flow instead of being too big for him.

Jonathan had never told Akta why he felt uncomfortable in those jewels and he wasn’t planning on telling him anytime soon. The only one who knew was Aeneas, who’d proven himself able to keep a secret. And really, Aeneas was his best friend and a very honourable man. There was no reason for Jonathan not to trust him with his fears and doubts. He could speak freely, as Aeneas could with him. Neither of them had to fear ridicule or dismissal when they spoke to each other about what weighed heavy on their souls.

But this was not the time to ponder on his friendship with his healer. Akta remained as silent as stone, gripping the fabric of his uniform tightly.

_That’s it._

‘Akta.’ The man’s head jerked one, as if he wanted to look at his Ruler but wasn’t sure he was allowed to. ‘What is it? Did something happen?’

All that left his servant’s lips was a cut off whine and some hastily muttered words. Despite the fact that whatever was vexing Akta was undoubtedly serious, Jonathan felt a spark of amusement at the display. ‘I do appreciate slow and clear speech Akta,’ he joked, delighting in the quick nod he received in return. Akta pulled his shoulders back, took a deep breath and then relayed the message again. Jonathan almost wished he hadn’t let the jeweller enter.

‘What do you mean you couldn’t give him the letter?’ he asked, his voice sharper than he wanted it to be.

‘Lisha sent me away, my Lord. She did not tell me why I could not give her apprentice the letter like you bid me to.’ His face turned sour, as did his tone. ‘The old hag slammed the door in my face. She almost knocked me out.’

‘Ah yes, she does tend to do that.’ Jonathan shook his head and asked for the letter he’d given Akta. As expected it was unopened, Arcnara’s red sigil unbroken. It was a striking contrast to the pure white of the envelope. As striking as it was, staring at it too long always gave Jonathan the most horrendous headache and made his eyes hurt. ‘Thank you Akta. You’re dismissed.’

‘My Lord.’

Lisha slamming a door in someone’s face was nothing new, far from it. If anything, it added to her charm. Especially when she did it to Boone once, when Jonathan had had the displeasure of hosting the man. Lisha slamming a door in someone’s face without snatching a important document from said someone’s fingers – and every letter from Jonathan was an important one, he was the bloody _Ruler_ , for Viktor’s sake – was, all in all, rather unusual. And therefore concerning.

He shot one last look at the red journal and the countless papers on his desk. He felt almost bad, abandoning them to go and search for who was undoubtedly the most important person to Jonathan in the palace. Almost being the key word.

His first, and only, stop was Lisha. The healer’s office was on the other side of the palace, which suited Jonathan just fine. He’d definitely had enough of wasting the day away at his desk. Smiling softly, he exited his office and made his way down the spiral staircase. Relocating his office to one of the towers had been quite a controversial choice, as normally, the Ruler’s office was near the entrance hall so that, should the need arise, the Ruler was able to either escape or jump into a carriage to get to an emergency meeting as fast as possible. Jonathan had felt the need to see the whole city from above and he preferred to feel the fresh breeze when he worked.

Arcnara’s palace was grand, but by no means a delicate thing. It was sturdy and warm, beautifully decorated with gems, paint and stained glass. But the stone itself, no matter how much it was polished in some areas – the entrance hall was all smooth marble, and sometimes it irritated Jonathan to no end – would never lose its character, its rough edges and frankly unimpressed aura. The palace had been shaped into a grand thing that came alight with colours of all kinds due to the decorations and the windows, yet no one would call it delicate, fine, or even elegant. Elegance was not a thing the Gynasounian people thought of when they admired the stones they came from. They valued steadfastness, endurance, pride and warmth most of all.

Jonathan hummed, strolling through one of his favourite corridors. Plants and vines littered the walls, growing merrily and winding their way out of the stone windows. The Ruler didn’t remember which one of his preceders had been this fond of plants, but he was grateful they’d ordered this corridor to be dedicated to the lush things. It was refreshing.

He was almost at Lisha’s office, the heavy oak doors just a few metres away, when something rather unfortunate and quite humiliating occurred : Jonathan, mentally rehearsing what he would say once he was inside the healer’s office, tripped on his outer robe, stumbled, was unable to steady himself on a wayward shelf to his left, and fell flat on his face. On his way down he’d also taken the shelf with him. But the worst thing by far was that the corridor was full of servants, who’d all had the pleasure of witnessing the accident. Most of them sprang into action after a few seconds of awkward silence had passed, lifting the shelf and putting the candles that had fallen out back in the right places. The others helped Jonathan up, who was rubbing his nose. His eyes looked rather wet.

‘Ow. Fuck, this hurts,’ he said, finally taking in the faces of his employees. A few of them had the decency to look concerned. The majority wore cracked masks of seriousness, their desire to laugh evident in their eyes and the twitching of their lips. Jonathan grinned weakly at them. ‘Oh come off it. If I’d witnessed someone fall on their arse in such a ridiculous manner, I’d laugh too. You have my permission if it makes you feel better.’

It earned him a few nervous laughs, but it seemed they would feel a lot more comfortable dropping their masks once Jonathan was gone. Which was fine, even though it did sting a bit. It made the nasty voices in the back of his mind pipe up, taunting him and telling him what kind of Ruler wasn’t even able to make his employees feel welcome to be themselves. He promptly pushed the voices into a small box in some deep pit in his mind that would, sadly, unlock once he turned in for the night. But that was a matter to be pondered later.

He knocked on Lisha’s doors, mindful of the heavy ruby ring on his right hand. He didn’t want the silver prongs, which encased the enormous gem, to damage the already battered wood. The harsh bid to enter was his cue. Determined to find out why his friend wasn’t receiving his letters, Jonathan entered the healer’s office and immediately had to duck. The glass vial, which had been aimed at his head, shattered against the doors.

‘What the actual fuck, Lisha?!’ he screeched once he had found his voice again. ‘Have you finally gone completely mad?’

Said madwoman glowered at him, eyes narrowed and lips pulled back in an angry snarl.

 _Oh dear_.

‘What the fuck? What the fuck?! That’s what _you_ ,’ she angrily pointed at him with one finger, ‘are asking _me_? What’s that I heard about budgets being cut?’ She stood up from her place behind the dark – and were those scorch marks? – desk and started rummaging through a drawer that was overflowing with various papers and what looked like torn out pages of old books. Huffing triumphantly when she pulled out a piece of parchment that had stains and spots of pink liquid all over it, she strode over to Jonathan and almost shoved it in his face.

‘Do you have any idea how expensive it is to get waveberries from Liranae? Or diamond grass? It only grows in one, one thrice damned river in Gynasou, and there is a limited supply since the local healers need most of it to treat burns. Apparently, when they emerged from stone they forgot to take their common sense with them. One. Does. Not. Touch. Garnet. Vipers.’

She was growing more agitated with every word and her head was taking on what Jonathan suspected was a very much unhealthy shade of red. He didn’t have any room to back away so he just raised his hands in a placating gesture, hoping she’d accept his display of surrender.

Of course she didn’t.

‘And you,’ she jammed her finger into his chest to enunciate every word, ‘ want to tell me that budgets. Are. Being. Cut?’

Jonathan’s mind was running faster than he had from the local butcher when he’d stolen monkey sausages for his seventh birthday celebration dinner. He hoped his confusion and helplessness didn’t show on his face, because he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about and the last thing he wanted was to stand there and take a lecture while looking like a clueless idiot. Which, granted, he was right now. But that was most certainly not the point.

‘Lisha,’ he said, putting as much authority in her name as he was able to right in that moment. It worked, and the greying healer stopped poking and verbally assaulting him. At the beginning of his rule Jonathan had tried his best to earn her respect and her politeness. He had failed miserably. Multiple times. One of the senior servants had taken pity on the new Ruler and informed him that Lisha had not been polite to a single Ruler ever since her first day as palace healer. Hearing that had been balm for Jonathan’s poor soul. Lisha might not respect him, but at least she hadn’t respected anyone before him either.

‘With all due respect, I have no idea what you’re talking about. No one’s budget is being cut, least of all that of the healers. I know that these ingredients are by far not the most affordable, and I also know of their importance.’ A Ruler was supposed to make things such as these his business after all.

Lisha’s entire demeanour changed in a matter of seconds. Her lips curved into a teasing smile, she straightened up - she stopped looming, now he could breathe a little easier-and bounced back on her heels. ‘Good to hear, my boy. Good to hear. Thank you for informing me, though I must say a messenger would have done the job just as well. No need for you to come down personally.’

Jonathan frowned. ‘Yes well, it does make their job quite difficult when you slam doors in their faces,’ he drawled. Then he remembered what he’d come down for. ‘Lisha, where is Aeneas? I’d like to talk to him for a few moments if it does not impose upon his or your work.’

She shrugged. ‘He wouldn’t care whether you’re interfering or not. The boy suddenly develops an affinity for multitasking once you enter a room.’ She threw him a look he couldn’t have identified if he wanted to. He was busy trying to ignore the heat that threatened to overtake his face. ‘But I have no idea where he is.’

That particular bit of information made Jonathan stop short. If she didn’t know where Aeneas was, did that mean his friend had gone out to gather supplies and had gotten lost somewhere? ‘Elaborate,’ he commanded, even though he knew that a command was not the best route to take when he wanted Lisha to tell him something about her apprentice. He didn’t notice the quiet humming at the back of his mind.

The shine in Lisha’s green eyes dulled ever so slightly and she nodded sluggishly, as if caught in a daze. ‘I gave him the day off after the fiasco the library. Thought he must have the chance to look after his sister.’

The storm of worry rising inside him instantly died down, his inner waters calming. Aeneas was with Echo then. That was good. He’d just wait for the rain to die down and then he would head to Aeneas’ home to check on them. Echo must still be in shock after the incident. He knew he would be.

He thanked Lisha, assuring her again that no, he was sure that no budgets were being cut and yes, he would look into the stack of papers on his desk again just to be sure. Shaking his head fondly, he closed the doors to her office behind him only to find the corridor deserted. The servants had left.

Jonathan supposed that while the world outside was still drowning in water, he might as well finish his work. Apparently, he wasn’t to do that, for a messenger crossed his path halfway to his office. The black uniform with a patch of differently coloured cloths, all united by a bright red crown, neatly sewn into his soaked travelling cloak was nothing if not a dead giveaway. It was one of the King’s messengers. Jonathan straightened instinctively, acknowledging the kneeling man and bid him to stand.

‘His Majesty the King wishes for you to join him for dinner, my Lord.’

_Oh thank the gods, I really didn’t look forward to paperwork._


	9. Hopeless heart don’t fly away

Caris

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Caris could live with a lot of things, quite a lot in fact. Not seeing her brother for longer periods of time, the consequences of loneliness, or the weird texture of mushrooms in a meal. She wasn’t happy about those things by any means but she could live with them, just like she could live with the stuck up assholes that made up two thirds of the people she was forced to work with. So maybe she did regularly imagine what it would feel like to have them pushing up daisies instead of ruining her afternoon, but honestly, if someone else were to work her job, they would say the same.

Now, there were few things she could not live with. One of them was being completely and utterly passive. She hated it, she needed to be involved, know her role and play it accordingly. Being told to just observe and not do much else was also an order, so had the King instructed her to do so she wouldn’t have had any complains. Of course she observed anyways, out of habit, but that was decidedly not the point. The point was that she didn’t like being told to stand near the King’s dining table and say nothing, do nothing except stand around and listen.

Of course, that was exactly what she was doing. It wasn’t like she could have said no had she wanted to, unfortunately. No, she was stuck in the stuffy room with one insane family and Gynasou’s resident idiot Ruler. Before Aeneas and Echo had departed, they had told her a little bit about Jonathan. It was weird to think that he’d been a Ruler for the better part of a year and Caris had never really spoken to him. Brief interactions, a nod here and there. Nothing to judge him by, to learn who he was. But now Aeneas and Echo – mainly Aeneas – had told her a few things.

Dinner was a rather frosty affair. The King spoke with his children and his wife, asked about their day and eventually discussed the plans for a new dungeon beneath his castle with his wife. She was in charge of the construction.

None of them acknowledged Jonathan, who was fidgeting and pulling at the collar of his robe, in any way. They did not spare him a glance, eating and talking as if he was nothing but air. Something wasn’t right, Caris knew that much. Much to her chagrin, however, she was well aware that she would not find out what was wrong unless she did as she had been told. Which meant: stay still, observe, but don’t partake in whatever shit is going down.

_What a load of crap._

Grey eyes fixated on Jonathan, who was breathing carefully. Too carefully, as if he had to calm himself. Caris narrowed her eyes at him, but as his own gaze was averted, he remained unaware. His fingers clenched around the golden cutlery until his knuckles turned white and Caris had the sneaking suspicion that his grip was that tight because he was desperately trying to stop himself from shaking.

Queen Jira turned slightly, took one ice cold look at Jonathan and turned to her husband. She smiled sharply, lips pulling back to reveal teeth as white as bone. ‘Darlings,’ she addressed her children, warmth creeping into her voice. ‘Daddy and John have some very important things to discuss. Would you like to stay or shall we take our leave now?’

The older of the two siblings looked up. She was the spitting image of her father, bright green eyes that gave her a feline aura and sleek black hair. Unlike her father, who favoured dark lip paints and brightly coloured eyebrows, she stayed away from any and all face paints. What she did do was adorn her hair with all sorts of wires and jewels.

‘And what will they be talking about,’ she drawled, raising one eyebrow in obvious disdain. ‘There is nothing new to discuss, except of course the lives of the local nobility.’ She wrinkled her nose and Caris did so internally as well. All the local nobility had to offer was scandal and drama. Which was amusing in its own right but one quickly grew tired of it.

‘Very well Anya. Porlo, what about you?’

Prince Porlo was rather fond of not talking to anyone if he could help it, so it was unsurprising when he shook his head. The corners of Jira’s mouth twitched down briefly. She recovered quickly, clapping her hands together before waving away any servants that remained. A bright smile was plastered onto her face. ‘Very well. Dearest, we’ll be on our way. Don’t forget our sparring session later.’

The King shot her a grateful smile, taking her hands in his and pressing a few kisses on her knuckles. ‘I would never, my sun. Going to bed without having been knocked into the dirt twice makes for a horrible sleep.’

Caris eyebrows shot up to her hairline and she pressed her lips together to avoid snorting. Those two were a pair, she’d never seen someone get so worked up over chess and knife throwing, but oh well. She wasn’t about to comment on it.

_Whatever floats their boat._

She bowed to the trio when they passed her but stayed where she was. She knew better than to move, especially since the King had not dismissed her. Her eyes wandered again, this time meeting Jonathan’s blue ones. They stared at each other for a minute. Caris knew that no matter how hard he glared at her, her own gaze would not waver like his did. She, after all, knew what she was doing and how to keep a mask in place. The poor lad did not. He was vulnerable, his soul bared for the world to see. Desperation, fear, determination, all wrapped up in blue. She could not offer him comfort. There was none. She didn’t even know him.

‘Jonathan.’

Caris hadn’t known that it was possible to lace one word with so much disappointment. She supposed one learned a new thing every day.

King Loktur shook his head slowly, tutting and sighing. He finally looked at Jonathan, whose breathing had picked up. ‘Whatever am I going to do with you?’

‘Your Majesty,’ Jonathan rasped, not daring to raise his head and look at his King, at the man who had taken him under his wing when Jonathan had barely been 14. Caris had done some research. ‘Your Majesty, whatever I’ve done, I could not be more sorry. Please, I’ll make amends, I’ll…’

Loktur slammed his cup down and the Ruler snapped his mouth shut so fast Caris wondered if any of his teeth had cracked from the force.

When the King spoke, it was the calm before a storm, a venomous serpent poised for striking. ‘ _Whatever_ you’ve done? My, my, Jonathan. We both know you’re smart, don’t we? You’re a clever boy, aren’t you? You know what you’ve done.’

Jonathan was panicking, his breaths nothing more than shallow gasps now.

‘My King, please, I’m sorry but I don’t know…’

Loktur let out a long suffering sigh that had Jonathan flinching ever so slightly. Caris cursed herself for the rising urge to step in front of Jonathan and promise him everything would be alright. He looked so much like Will used to look when their aunt and uncle shouted at each other: lost, frightened, ashamed.

‘Aeneas and Echo Torr, Jonny. You’re very close to at least one of them. You told me all about him and how good of a friend he is, remember?’

 _Oh. Oh no_.

Internally, Caris cursed. Loktur was going in for the kill.

Jonathan blinked owlishly, forehead creasing in confusion. ‘Yes, Aeneas and I…I mean, I do like him and we’re friends, good friends, and…what does this have to do with anything?’ His voice had grown stronger in the end, almost steely. It made something warm and bright swell in Caris’ chest. Apparently there were some people that Jonathan held more loyalty for than for his King. The feeling inside her grew steadily.

Loktur’s eyes narrowed dangerously. He did not seem to appreciate the defiance his protégé displayed. ‘Because, my darling boy,’ he said, almost snarling the sickly sweet endearment, ‘your good friend betrayed us. Betrayed me.’ His face lit up and he leaned forward to rest his chin on his intertwined fingers. Staring at Jonathan in mock sympathy, he cooed the next words. ‘Betrayed _you_.’

Caris was forced to watch as Jonathan crumbled. He couldn’t seem to comprehend it, his face scrunching up in disbelief and a great deal of confusion. Then his eyes widened. They seemed to grow brighter the more his face flushed.

‘That’s horse shite.’

Whatever Caris had expected him to say, that was certainly not it. Glancing at the King she smirked. She wasn’t the only one who’d done a double take then. Good.

‘I beg your pardon, Johnathan?’

‘I said,’ hissed Jonathan, and now Caris could see the fighter he was rumoured to be. Well, when one of the servants of Arcnara’s palace had told her the new Ruler was gifted when it came to sword fighting, she’d scoffed. Nobody could blame her for that, though. The majority of nobility was too lazy to pick up a sword themselves, weren’t they? ‘That that’s _horse shite_.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yes, really!’ Jonathan stood, slamming his hands onto the table. ‘Why would Aeneas betray me? He has no reason to. So maybe his sister is a little weird, but that doesn’t make her and Aeneas traitors. He wouldn’t do that. He’s at home, I asked Lisha!’

Loktur hummed, interested. ‘Lisha…the palace healer?’ He licked his lips, eyes glinting at the newly acquired information. Caris winced. ‘Interesting,’ he whispered, more to himself than anyone else. He looked back at Jonathan, who was closer to panting than breathing, and skilfully slid a new mask into place, one that almost made Caris want to retch. It was one of concern and pity, with just the tiniest bit of softness sprinkled in. This one always hid the most painful poison, the one that burrowed its way into your heart and lungs, sitting and prodding at you until it was difficult to breathe and your blood stung. She’d watched guards who’d been declared weak scratch at their arms and any bit of skin they could reach, pleading for her to make it stop, to make it better.

She didn’t, couldn’t, make it better. She didn’t know how. And sometimes that hurt her more than anything else.

‘Oh my poor boy,’ Loktur cooed, making Jonathan look at him and subconsciously tilt his head. ‘She lied to you, to her own Ruler.’ He shook his head, black strands becoming loose and now framing his face. Paired with the false pity written all over his face, he made for the perfect picture of a concerned parent. ‘I don’t know how she could do that to you. But perhaps she wanted to spare you the pain. Know that I am sorry, John. I never wanted this for you.’

‘What, what are you talking about?’

‘He’s gone, John. He betrayed us all. Together with his little sister, the librarian you told me about. He is not at home. He left, left you, left Arcnara. All of us.’

‘No. No, no, no, no, no. He’s,’ Jonathan took a shaky breath, one hand tugging at his hair. ‘He’s my best friend!’ He laughed breathily. ‘Neas wouldn’t just, he wouldn’t just leave like that. He’s not like that, I know him.’ He was whispering now, Caris had to concentrate to understand him. ‘Why would you think he betrayed us?’

‘Do you remember what I told you about the shields, John?’

‘Yes. They exist to protect us from what, and who, is out there to kill us. Viktor failed to destroy all the threats, and so,’ he gulped, ‘so the shields had to be erected.’

Pleased with what he was told, Loktur nodded. ‘Right you are. See, you are not so stupid after all. After all, you do remember why I took you under my wing?’

Jonathan nodded, though it seemed the movement exhausted him. There had to be a thousand different thoughts running through his head right now.

‘Say. It,’ Loktur demanded, all pretence of friendliness gone. Few blades were as sharp as Loktur’s tongue or his will to dissect every single opponent. When he found any left over defiance in his pets, he broke them down, cut them open and hollowed them out until he was satisfied. Caris hoped that just scratching and carving at Jonathan’s surface would be enough to satisfy him today.

‘Because, because I’m one of those things. The things that lurk behind those shields, waiting on innocent people to stumble off the paths and into their lairs. But I’m, I’m better, more human. I saw that what they do is wrong and I was sent to you by the go – by Viktor, to become better.’ He sounded so very small. ‘To become better than my brethren.’

Someone could have dosed Caris with freezing water taken from the lands of Izmet and it would have paled in comparison to the overwhelming numbness that hooked its claws into her flesh and started to tear away at it.

_Bastard! Bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard, bastard!_

She screamed internally, wishing for an opportunity to ram a knife into the King’s chest and slowly twist her way through tissue and muscle to see whether there was indeed a heart beating underneath his skin. Maybe she would only find a rotten and blackened little thing, dried up and housing worms instead of feelings.

Said bastard’s face was alight with glee, approval shining in his eyes. ‘Good boy.’ He did not say anything else but watched Jonathan with rapt attention, eyes flickering over the man who so desperately tried to get himself together. He smiled the moment Jonathan gasped and looked up, eyes wide and watery. For Caris, it was a punch to the gut she could not have blocked had she tried.

‘Did you think I…is that why you were ignoring me? You thought I, I helped? That I would betray you?’

‘Oh no my darling lamb.’ Loktur stood and stretched his arms out, catching Jonathan in a hug and lightly petted his hair.

Caris knew the tip of her nose and her cheeks were red. Whether it was from anger of grief she could not say. She tried to keep the pressure behind her eyes at bay with all her might, but found that she couldn’t. The tears rolling down her face were so hot they stung, yet she wished they were hotter; hot enough to drive the numbness away.

She’d been mistaken. All of these moves had been the stalking, the careful hunt. This right now was Loktur going in for the kill. It was a glorious one at that; slowly bleeding a heart until it had nothing more to give. 

‘You are forgiven, John,’ Loktur said softly, sounding almost paternal. Caris bit her tongue until she drew blood.

_There is nothing to forgive you asshole, he didn’t do anything wrong!_

Later - after Jonathan was back in Arcnara’s palace, undoubtedly breaking down after demanding confirmation about Aeneas’ departure from Lisha – Loktur would tell Caris why he had wanted her here. She would be too tired to do anything else but nod and say yes in appropriate moments, exhaustion seeping deep into her bones and making her mind too heavy for her to carry. She would go home in the rain, letting her tears fall silently until her walls crumbled and she started to wail, unheard, unseen. It would suit her just fine.

Caris had never been one for poetry. Yet when she went to bed that evening, ready for darkness and night to claim her and lead her to blissful calm and peace, one of her mother’s poems echoed through her mind. It was one of her favourites, the one her mother had always read to her and her brother when they were sick or feeling sad. Smiling sadly, she whispered it to herself in a futile attempt to lift her spirits.

‘Hopeless heart don’t fly away, live to see another day. Your wings are made of glass and stone, there are no feathers to carry you, no wind to take you home. Hopeless heart don’t fly away, your fall would be too much to take. I could not keep the pain at bay, so I beg you, do not make me ache.’

It didn’t help much. Closing her eyes, all Caris could think of was how much of a fucking disaster everything was. 

None of this had been supposed to happen.


	10. The guardians of Royal Road

### Chapter Text

Echo

Seven days, 168 hours, 10,080 minutes and 604,800 seconds. They had left Arcnara, their home, exactly seven days ago. Echo wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Of course she was excited to get to know all of Gynasou, or at least as much as they were able to. Was she also terrified? Yes. Because sooner or later, Aeneas and her would have to go through the barriers and truly enter Gynasou. She didn’t know what to expect, had no inkling who and what dwelled beyond the gleaming veil. It scared her more than anything else.

The Royal Road was easy to travel, being the soft, used road it was. Framed by mostly forest and the occasional town or village, it didn’t leave Echo feeling uneasy or anxious. Not yet, anyways. Sometimes, when peoples’ gazes lingered on her for too long, she found herself squashing the voice inside her that kept on screaming about how she was a wanted woman and the King had sent spies after her. Which was ridiculous. After all, the King had given her his word to mostly leave her alone. Sending spies or assassins after her and her brother would defeat the purpose of their game.

Echo shuddered. She still hated that word, but whenever she sought for another to describe the bizarre situation she was in, her brain did not come up with anything. It was too peaceful to call it a fight, too small – at least for now, she thought ruefully – to call it a war. Perhaps it was indeed a game. One she intended to win.

‘Are you alright?’

She turned to look at her brother, meeting his concerned gaze. Around them, the world seemed to drown in rain.

‘Not really,’ she admitted with a sigh, gesturing around them. ‘It has been raining all day, we haven’t come across any towns or inns by the road in two days and I’d give everything for a bed that’s not as soaked as I am.’

Her brother raised one eyebrow. ‘And?’

Echo scowled. ‘And I don’t like the idea of not knowing what we’re doing.’

It took two heartbeats for Aeneas to break out in giggles. Echo had never wanted to push him into mud more than right then. Perhaps she was being easily irritable, but she was tired, and cold, and she kept feeling eyes at the back of her neck, endlessly staring and unblinking. It made the hairs on her arms stand on end beneath her coat. Her skin kept breaking out in goosebumps but she didn’t know whether that was simply from her cloak clinging uncomfortably to her, or from the sensation of being followed.

Which, all in all, was ridiculous. Why would they be followed? Scratch that, who was crazy enough to be out and about except for other travellers?

Aeneas still hadn’t stopped laughing, now doubled over and holding his stomach. His voice had taken on a tinge of hysteria and it was much higher than usual. For a moment Echo wondered if it was just his lack of sleep getting to him, or if he felt the same strange eyes glaring holes into his back as she did. She was about to ask him when he went still, straightened up and glared at her. The silver in his eyes was like the edge of a sword, cutting mercilessly into soft and pliant flesh. Right now the flesh in question was Echo’s soul.

‘What did you expect? We’re on a quest to, what, destroy the barriers without being killed and left in a ditch for all kinds of beasts to feast on our corpses? To bring magic back? Unite humans and everyone else?’ he spat.

Echo felt her face heat up and took two steps forward, getting chest to chest with her brother and glaring up at him. ‘What the fuck is your problem, Aeneas?’

Her brother shook his head, effectively shaking his hood off. He threw his hands up in exasperation. For a moment, Echo thought she saw a glint of insecurity and guilt in his eyes. But when he turned his attention back to her, they were unreadable. That in itself was unusual. They were siblings, for Amira’s sake. They didn’t hide from each other.

‘We started this entire journey on a whim, now we’re only a week in and you’re already complaining and worrying! Did you think it would be easy, Echo?’

The younger Torr bit her lip in an effort to hold back the venom threatening to spill from her lips. She didn’t want to fight and something was clearly bothering her brother for him to lash out like that, but damn it that did not mean he had to be so mean. She was twenty one, not five. He didn’t have to be so condescending.

‘Okay, I get that you’re annoyed by the fact that we haven’t gotten far yet, and we’re both tired and cold. So get yourself together, take a deep breath and tell me what’s really bothering you,’ she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest and doing her best to stare Aeneas down.

For one tiny moment it looked like it worked. And then, it all went to shit; in the middle of a muddy road, rain merrily coming down upon them without mercy or consideration. Aeneas’ face contorted in a painful grimace, a look she’d so far only ever seen when he bit into a lemon and black pepper tart. Heaven knew why he loved those so much.

‘This is wrong,’ he exclaimed, throwing his leather bag down without care. Mud splattered their shoes and coats when it collided with the ground. ‘Why did we think this was a good idea? We’re more likely to die than succeed, Echo!’

_And you’re at fault._

He didn’t say it, but she heard it nevertheless. She was sure he wanted to say it. Echo clenched her fists at her sides and gave up on holding back. Aeneas did not want to talk but fight? Fine then. She was his sister and she loved him dearly but that did not mean that when he decided to clam up and be rude, she would just stand there and take it. Especially when he was acting this weird. He’d been all concerned earlier. His sudden mood swing into the opposite direction gave her emotional whiplash.

‘No one forced you to come! I would have gone alone too,’ she hissed, eyes blazing. Red met silver in a heated battle of wills. ‘Do you want to go back? Then go! See if that’s better. See if you can stomach every little unjust thing in Arcnara, knowing that it’ll become worse and worse. Knowing that nothing, nothing you do will stop it!’ She was yelling weakly, her anger chipping away at the wall she’d build inside herself over the past few months to keep her distress safely locked away.

Echo had tried, she had tried so hard to make it better. She’d gone to three, four and five to help, to teach them what little she knew. Someone had, one fateful rainy day, shoved a parcel into her hands and told her to keep it safe no matter what. It had been the journal that she was trying so hard to understand. When she’d finally figured out what it was, she was overjoyed. It meant progress, for her, the small group of people she called her _pavendra_ , her rebellion.

The day after she had received the gift, the person who’d given it to her in a hurry was hung for treason.

No matter what she did, it wasn’t enough. Not enough to stave off the hunger and sickness taking hold of the majority of Arcnara, to keep them safe from the upturned noses of the upper class.

It wasn’t enough. She hoped this, whatever they would do, would be.

‘If you have a fucking problem, you talk to me. If I have one, I bloody talk to you. We’re alone, the weather has been the worst for six days now, and we’re tired. It’s shit, but it happens. But I need to rely on you! So either you talk to me properly, or you find a corner and sulk in peace,’ she hissed at him. Deliberately softening her voice, she stepped back and stopped invading his personal space. Maybe that would help them clear their heads after their small argument.

_Argument, right. All we did was yell at each other without coming close to the actual problem._

‘I don’t want to fight. I’m tired and hungry, and we’ll both say things we’ll regret if we keep this up.’

Aeneas looked at her. She could see the war waging behind his eyes, the cogs turning in his head. He was upset about something but he didn’t want to tell her about it. That stung. Just a tiny bit. The size of a copper dragon, maybe.

After what seemed like a small eternity to Echo, he sighed, slumping forward slightly. He picked up his bag, avoiding his sister’s eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he said, and by Amira, he sounded tired. ‘Let’s just keep moving. There’s bound to be an inn somewhere.’ When he made to walk past her, she grabbed his arm. Instead of warm, as the touch should have been, it was cold as ice, almost freezing to the touch. Winter was slowly but surely creeping up on Gynasou, and with it always came cold rain from the coast. And they’d been walking in it for too long.

‘Tell me what’s wrong?’

He covered her hand with his, looking at her from the corner of his eyes. ‘When we’re safe and dry,’ he promised quietly, softly. Not quite an apology for lashing out at her, not yet. He would apologise properly later, he always did. For now, his softer tone was enough. A sign of regret. Echo snorted. They never had been good at staying mad at each other.

Half an hour later – or at least what Echo assumed was half an hour – it was still raining. Echo’s vision swam every few seconds when stray droplets got into her eyes and she had to wipe them away with her soaked sleeve. She was about to call out to Aeneas that they should seek shelter in the woods, when she collided with him. He’d come to a stand still in the middle of the road, which was so muddy from the rain it might as well have started to transform into a river.

‘Uh, Aeneas? Any particular reason we’ve stopped walking or did you just feel like taking a break?’

Instead of answering, he raised one arm and pointed at something a few odd metres away from them. It was hard to make out, nothing but a steadily moving shadow, unperturbed by the rain and mud. But whatever it was, it definitely was not human. It was too big for that, too tall and broad. Faintly glowing too. And frankly, it looked like it was walking on four feet.

‘Okay,’ Echo said, stretching the word in her mouth, where it left a bitter taste. ‘That’s not a human.’

‘No really,’ Aeneas muttered, shooting her an unimpressed glare. ‘And here I thought it might be our great aunt Via.’

‘No, no, you’re thinking of grandpa Luz. Great aunt Via married this guy from, what was it? Gureé? If she were to return from the dead, it would be with a whole lot of seaweed.’

‘Pretty sure it was Track Falls, not Gureé.’

‘Really? I vividly remember dad complaining about Via’s tendency to send us salted coconut bread. Don’t they only have that in Gureé?’

Aeneas furrowed his brows before snapping his fingers, realisation dawning on his face. ‘Ah, right. Nobody would walk like that except for Luz. And ew,’ he wrinkled his face, ‘I’d forgotten how awful that bread was.’

Echo snorted and elbowed him. ‘It wasn’t awful, just…’

‘Confusing. I don’t know if it was supposed to be sweet or salty but it was an unholy mixture of both. Too much of both.’ He shuddered, clearly repulsed.

‘You eat lemon tarts with black pepper,’ Echo reminded him, mischief lacing her voice alongside concern. She’d tried one of those tarts once and it had only taken one bite for her to swear she’d never, ever, would eat another one as long as she lived. How damaged were her brother’s tastebuds for him to genuinely enjoy those monstrosities?

Said brother looked affronted. ‘Yes,’ he said, stressing the word as if she could not understand him, ‘but they are actually good.’

‘Sure. Keep telling yourself that. I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who can stomach these things.’

He spluttered, as much as he could without starting to cough because he accidentally kept inhaling gusts of rain laced wind. ‘Jonathan likes them too!’

Echo felt one of her eyes twitch. She remembered Jonathan subtly gagging after each and every bite he bravely took and how he smiled when Aeneas beamed at the fact that someone else liked them. ‘Yes, well, Jonathan obviously has no taste,’ she drawled. If asked, she would unabashedly admit to being eager to see how her brother would react.

Before Aeneas could shoot back, however, heavy footsteps diverted their attention back to the glowing problem at hand. A man grinned cheerfully at them, lantern in hand and leading a horse pulling a carriage by the reigns. ‘Hello there,’ he called out to them, louder than necessary.

Echo felt like smacking herself. Of course this was a human. Or technically, a human was part of the shadowy figure they’d seen. Aeneas and she were still on the safe side of the barrier. What kind of creature could possibly roam around freely out here?

Still, she was unsure whether she should relax. The guy looming above them looked friendly enough but that seldom mattered.

‘Woah, you guys look wiped out. Need a ride?’

Aeneas seized the opportunity. ‘Yeah, that would be great. Can you bring us to the nearest inn?’

The man’s face fell slightly, the too bright light in his eyes dimming. He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. ‘Ah, ye, you see, there’s not really an inn around these parts. Next one would be in Kasserra, ‘n that’s,’ he broke off, whispering to himself for a few moments, ‘about four days away. And that’s on a horse and on a good day. In this mud bath?’ He gestured around them, giggling slightly. ‘And on foot? Good luck.’ He stopped laughing when he noticed how crestfallen the siblings before him looked at his proclamation. ‘Hey, no, no, don’t look so glum friends! You can come camp out at mine for the time being if you want. My spouse and I haven’t had guests in such a long time. They make the best potato soup. How about it?’ He wiggled his eyebrows at them.

‘Uh…’ Every single survival instinct drilled into her screamed at Echo not to take the offer. They didn’t know this man. On the other hand, if they were to take him up on his offer, they would have a warm place to rest. Aeneas, unlike her, didn’t seem to have any second thoughts, as he accepted for them both.

The stranger lit up again, a beacon of warmth amongst the shadows and cold. ‘Sweet! Follow me. Oh, and I’m Zyras, nice to meet you guys.’

Zyras’ home was something else. A small hut made of an array of stones and even pebbles that did not quite fit together in some places, painted with browns and greens to melt into its surroundings. The only thing separating it from the bushes around it were two golden handprints on the front door. It didn’t look like it was made to fit someone of Zyras’ size but the giant ball of sunshine fit himself through the door just fine.

‘Just leave your coats and shoes at the door,’ Zyras called out upon entering the hut. Not a heartbeat later he was gone, shouting excitedly for someone called Rivre. Echo figured Rivre was the spouse Zyras had told them about on their way to the couples’ home. She’d just slipped out of her coat when Aeneas whistled loudly.

‘Echo! You gotta come see this.’

‘Why, did you discover some weird ritual stuff and figured out the nice guy that invited us to spend the night is actually the leader of some cult and wants to kill us?’

His head appeared in the doorway again. Aeneas looked at her with a mixture of annoyance and amusement on his face. ‘First of all, woah, is there someone in Arcnara who’ll come to me with a surprisingly deadly case of common cold as soon as we get back? Or maybe someone who I’ll unfortunately have to cut open because they managed to catch a rare disease?’ He batted his eyelashes at her innocently. Or as innocently as he could when he had just asked her if he should kill someone for her. ‘Secondly, no, of course not. I just never expected all of this stuff to fit in here. So come on.’ The last word probably came out more whiny than her brother had wanted it to.

‘Yeah, yeah, hold your horses, I’m coming.’

_Holy shit._

Echo found herself reluctantly agreeing with her brother. Bookshelves lined the walls, seemed to melt into them. They were filled with leather journals, each one a different colour but with two golden fingertips on their spines. If Echo had not been able to feel the cold floor beneath her feet, she would have questioned its existence, for all around her lay cushions and blankets. She’d landed in a sea of reds bleeding into fiery oranges normally only private to embers, interwoven with rays of liquid sunlight. If all of these were as soft and warm as they looked, she might be tempted not to leave.

‘Ah! There you are.’ Zyras beamed at the siblings, dragging his spouse in behind him. Rivre was pudgy, had more rings on their fingers than Echo had known was humanly possible, and their eyes matched their husband’s more or less perfectly. Echo hadn’t previously noticed, but Zyras had one green eye and one that was of such a deep brown it might have been black. Rivre, on the other hand, had one dark green eye that reminded Echo of the pictures of the Emerald Ponds she’d seen in one of Omra’s books. The other was hazel. How they fit together intrigued Echo on one hand, on the other it made her feel like the hands of the dead played piano on her spine.

She’d heard of local legends like soulmates but everyone knew those were nothing but rubbish. Yet she couldn’t help but think that maybe there was indeed some truth to it, when two people with the same eyes found each other.

Rivre frowned as they took in their guests. ‘That won’t do, you poor things must be freezing!’ They took Aeneas and Echo by the hands, smiling softly and ushering them to the small hearth. ‘We still have some soup and bread left. My husband should have been a baker, but he cannot cook for the life of him.’ Zyras laughed sheepishly, kissing his spouse’s cheek before fetching two bowls.

‘Don’t you worry friends,’ he said, voice taking on a strange echo neither of the siblings had the energy to pay much attention to. ‘You are safe here. No harm will come to you tonight. Rest and you’ll feel much better in the morning.’

Perhaps they should not have fallen asleep so easily. Echo remembered that Aeneas had promised to tell her what was going on when they were safe and dry. And they were. As safe and dry as possible, lost in blankets, cushions and warm food. There were two people watching over them. For a moment Echo was taken back to her childhood, when her mother and father would sit by her bed until she fell asleep, telling her that they were making sure no nightmares or evil spirits would make a home in her dreams. Her throat closed up and she had to swallow a few times to make sure she could continue eating. If Zyras and Rivre noticed the tears rolling down her cheeks as she ate, they did not say anything. Aeneas took her hand in his and squeezed tightly, stifling his own sniffles and sobs.

They were exhausted. Perhaps they should not have fallen asleep as easily as they did when Zyras and Rivre started humming a lullaby neither of the siblings recognised. Perhaps they should have questioned the glowing runes etched into stone and wood. But they were too tired to do so, their minds and bodies stopping to demand rest and instead forcefully taking it.

Echo was woken by a yell. She shot up and looked around, ready to either fight or run for her life, when she spotted the culprit. Her brother, who was desperately trying to get a frog off his face. For a moment Echo panicked, thinking it a poisonous frog, before relaxing. While the small fellow assaulting Aeneas’ face did resemble the Blue Breather – and by Viktor, Echo thought that name was the most ridiculous thing anyone had ever come up with – tiny stripes instead of dots covered its body. Echo grinned.

‘Aw, you made a friend.’

‘I made an enemy if anything,’ Aeneas muttered angrily. He stared down at the frog trapped between his fingers with barely disguised contempt. ‘You hear that, fiend? Destroyer of peaceful slumber? You are my enemy.’

The small frog croaked happily, batting its big eyes at Aeneas. Grumbling, he set the frog down.

‘And don’t you dare to ever wake me up like that again.’

Echo shook her head, not even trying to stifle her laughter. When she looked around and took their surroundings in, however, it died in her throat.

‘Neas?’ She slapped his shoulder, voice shaking and eyes wide. He cursed when he followed her gaze.

They were still at the hut, that much was certain. Echo recognised the shelves, old and moulding except for the parts where runes had been cut into the wood. The windows were shattered, shards littering the floor overgrown with moss. The sea of cushions and blankets of the previous night was gone. Now, red floor tiles that had no been reclaimed by moss were broken up by tree roots. It looked like no one had been in that hut for a very long time.

But that couldn’t be. It was impossible, Zyras and Rivre had…they had…

‘What the fuck.’

‘Language, Echo,’ Aeneas admonished her weakly. In any other situation, Echo would have rolled her eyes at him. She wasn’t five anymore, she could swear all she wanted, thank you very much.

The creaking of the door leading into Zyras’ and Rivre’s garden made both of them jump. Aeneas almost tripped over his own feet in his effort to get up. In the end, they came face to face with an equally startled fawn, which promptly turned tail and ran off again, golden fur gleaming in the rays of sunlight breaking through the clouds.

Aeneas’ hand shot out and curled around Echo’s wrist. He was trembling like a leaf in particularly harsh wind.

‘We,’ he intoned, eyebrows raised, ‘are most certainly not going anywhere except through the front door.’

Two minutes later they were wandering a withered cobble stone path through what had one been a well kept garden. Now, weeds and plants towered over them, merrily growing in all possible directions. Echo scratched her arm on thorns and sharp bark belonging to slim, silver trees she could not identify, more than once. Technically, it should not have been possible to get lost in a garden, no matter how tall the plants and flowers were. Unfortunately, whatever was generally seen as impossible happened to Echo and Aeneas more often than not.

So they were lost. To Echo it felt right. The wind, harsh, almost to spite the gentle, albeit weak, sunlight, was not noticeably amidst the green shelter they found themselves in. Grass wound around Echo’s ankles, welcoming, becoming insistent the more they tread the path before them, but never pulling. Leaves, bigger than her head, brushed against her shoulders, straining to get to her. For one moment she halted, thinking she’d felt someone pat her on the shoulder, but when she turned around, ready to call out for Zyras or Rivre, nothing but tall grass and blossoms greeted her.

After a few minutes, she hoped it had only been minutes and not hours, Echo started to feel uneasy. The grass stopped winding around her ankles, only brushing it occasionally. A horrible crunching sound beneath her feet made her look down, the suddenly shy grass and plants around her forgotten. When she saw what she’d just stepped on, bile rose in her throat. It burned on its way back down. The thing on the ground was dirty, long, almost brittle and looked distinctly like…

‘That’s a spine,’ Aeneas stated hollowly, eyes wide but empty.

‘A spine.’

‘Yes, that’s what I just said. I know what a spine looks like.’

‘Good for you, Mr Healer. I didn’t want to know what one looked like up close.’

Aeneas swallowed audibly, working his jaw for a few seconds. ‘We should go back. You don’t want to see them.’

Echo frowned at him, carefully stepping away and around the now shattered spine. ‘Whom do I not want to see?’

When her brother looked away, shaking his head minutely, she pushed past him onto a small clearing next to an old fence, almost torn down completely. A skeleton lay on the ground before one of the moulding poles that remained, clutching another in a desperate embrace. Roots and vines held them together, unwilling to deny two souls what had been their last comfort. A small rosebush had stubbornly wrapped its branches and thorns around shiny rings on one of the skeleton’s fingers.

Echo choked back a scream. This was an open grave, an accusation, a warning. Aeneas, with his infallible talent for unnecessary comments, awkwardly scratched the back of his head.

‘Looks like the dead are wonderful hosts.’

‘You are impossible!’

She was fully prepared to give him an earful when she spotted words carved into the ground before Zyras and Rivre. It was common, not Monir, their mother-tongue. That wasn’t a problem per se, Omra had taught all their apprentices who didn’t already speak it the common tongue, but Echo still wasn’t as much of a master as she would have liked to be. But these words were some she’d heard before.

‘Joined in Ciar’s embrace and Gynasou’s gratitude. What follows is a…gift? Yes, what follows is a gift. Remain for the worthy ones, in the name of…,’ she stopped, squinting at the name, ‘Andrápodon? Guard this road.’ She smiled softly. ‘I’ve never heard of humans becoming spirits.’

Aeneas shrugged, eyes trained on the gate of the fence, and the woods beyond it. ‘Maybe because no one was ever around to tell. Or something people believed. If we’d tell someone we saw ghosts, they’d tell us to lay off the booze.’ Though his tone was light, Echo sensed the sorrow behind his words. She wanted to ask what that was about, but as quickly as he had succumbed to his sudden grief, he snapped out of it. His eyes were shining wetly when he turned to her. He took her hand and pulled her into his arms, resting his chin on top of her head, releasing a shaky breath.

Around them, the world was still.

‘Whatever happens once we cross this barrier,’ he whispered, shushing her when she opened her mouth to interrupt. His arms tightened around her and Echo relaxed. They’d hugged like this since they were children. It hadn’t lost its comfort over the years. ‘We do this together. You’re my sister, and whatever they’ll throw at us, I won’t lose you. I won’t. And I’m sorry for how I acted. I was, still am, frustrated and angry with myself. You were an easy target to let it all out on, but that’s not fair and I’m sorry.’

Echo snorted, made to tell him that she accepted the apology and that she was happy he finally got over his pride, but he kept on talking.

‘I know that it’s stupid because you’re my sister and you should mean more to me and I shouldn’t feel guilty about any of this because he was probably the one who snitched but I left John without saying a word. He doesn’t even know that I’m gone and when he finds out, he’ll think I left because I hate him and I won’t be able to tell him that I was just too angry and scared that he truly did lead the King to your rebellion that I hid away instead of asking and I.’

Echo tightened her own arms around him and cut him off. ‘Neas, it’s okay, I got you. It’s okay.’ She repeated the mantra a few times before his breathing returned to normal.

‘Jonathan is your best friend.’ Internally, she scoffed at herself.

_Best friend. Yeah, right, that’s all they are. And I have an ice cube for breakfast every day._

‘I don’t think there’s anything you guys can’t sort out. He won’t hate you, or himself, I think. And he means a lot to you. There’s no need to feel guilty about leaving him. And I won’t make you choose between him and me, should the situation ever arise. You don’t need to choose between two things that bring you happiness, you know. It’s not me, your family, or him, your best friend. If he ever comes to his senses, he could be part of the family too.’ She huffed. ‘Though you two’ll have a big talk when we see him again.’

‘Yeah, yeah I know. Thanks, Echo.’

‘Anytime,’ she whispered back, refusing to be the first one to let go.

They bowed their heads to the two skeletons before crossing the fence and heading into the woods, beyond the barrier. If Echo heard Zyras and Rivre whisper good luck, she didn’t tell Aeneas. She had the sneaking suspicion that he was more freaked out by ghosts and spirits than he let on. Which was fine but maybe he’d have to grow out of it. The lovely couple were probably not the only ghosts they’d encounter on their way through Gynasou.


	11. To capture the sun and stars

Aeneas 

Waking up in a forest was different to waking up in a bed, safe and sound at home. Not a bad kind of different by any means, no, Aeneas had been to fields and forests enough times to be comfortable there, but he had never really slept in one before. It was soothing, somehow. The soft light filtering through the trees, winding its way through the labyrinth of leaves and blossoms greedily gobbling up whatever cold sunlight they could get.

Sunlight tended to become cold in winter. Aeneas didn’t know why. Everything in Gynasou seemed to grow significantly colder in winter, even though they didn’t have snow. Well, in Arcnara they did not. He was pretty sure the poor fuckers near and up in the Sugilite Mountains actually did. But fire became freezing, at least when you lit one outside. It lead to quite a few burned limbs every year. Aeneas supposed it was quite hard to remember not to touch fire when you couldn’t feel heat.

Sunlight, merciless in the throes of summer, barely touched the skin with more than a faint kiss anymore. Moonlight had always been cold, so there was no difference there to take note of.

He expected the forests to be loud, full of life and the screams of various animals. He expected everything beyond the borders – barriers – to be weird, incomprehensible, glowing, even. But the forest was quiet. If it wasn’t for the occasional rustle of leaves as a monkey climbed a tree, Aeneas would have thought the forest to be dead.

All of this before him, behind him, around him, seemed too normal. Too quiet, too dead, too abandoned. Perhaps, he realised, it was indeed abandoned. Or perhaps it was a centuries old graveyard for people and animals perished in the war, the raids.

Branches snapped under his boots, the sound echoing for a few seconds, louder than it ought to be. Aeneas was well aware of the unease nestling in his chest, taking syringes and injecting the feeling into every nerve, every artery and vein he had. His throat was dry and swallowing did nothing to ease it. Were they being watched? It would make sense. They were easy prey, vulnerable and in unfamiliar terrain. If someone – or worse yet, something – wanted to rip them apart, what could they possible do to stop it from happening?

He tried to shake those thoughts from his mind. Panicking hadn’t done him any good before, it wouldn’t do him good now.

Aeneas took a deep breath, trying to focus on the way his lungs expanded instead of the imaginary eyes he could feel at the back of his neck. He was in a forest, not on his way to the gallows. There was simply no one here to watch him, no one to jeer and demand his head.

Aeneas gave up on breathing exercises after a few minutes, slightly gleeful that his anxiety now slowly made way for frustration. It wasn’t what he wanted but he would make due.

Evading some low hanging branches determined to hit him in the face and poke his eyes out, he took in his environment for what must have been the fifteenth time that day. And who could blame him? Perhaps the world stood still, perhaps he was dreaming, but he was sure he had never before seen such beauty.

At least not that kind of beauty.

He steadfastly ignored the images his brain pushed at him, of hypnotising blue framed by gold, and smooth marble dipped in silver and rubies.

The forest’s beauty was rays of sunlight in cold air, the tell tale scent of changing seasons and the faintest smell of diamond grass - sharp and bitter - permeating it. This beauty was serene, untouchable, old, if not ancient. It came alive with colours and shapes, a mixture of pretty cures and even prettier poisons. This beauty would swallow death and transform it, presenting it as art or preserving whatever love had been held for it.

He shivered, cold clambering up his spine as he remembered Zyras and Rivre. Aeneas did not know Gynasou’s history very well, even though he once was interested in it as a young boy. Whatever happened to the couple, it must have been during the raids. Aeneas squashed the childish desire to go back and wait for the spirits, to demand answers or better yet, be given clues to piece their story together like a puzzle rising in him. The sooner he and Echo got this little expedition over with, the better.

Eyes trained on his little sister’s back, he frowned. She was steadfastly making her way through the jungle of crooked branches and vines connecting the plants around them to each other. Even though it was ridiculous – Aeneas was sure he was imagining things, that his mind was making things up out of sheer boredom – the blossoms turned their heads to look at them when they walked by. Leaves swayed in a breeze that did not exist, and vines shook ever so slightly, barely visible.

Around them, everything was alive and subtly communicating. Or perhaps, he mused, it was no subtle at all. Perhaps this was the forest equivalent of two deaf old men yelling at each other from different rooms, and Echo and Aeneas just didn’t know what subtlety looked like. After all, anything was possible out here. Why not the forest laughing at them?

When Aeneas walked straight into a suspiciously polished branch, he wanted to snap. There was a difference between quietly or not so quietly making fun of two visitors, but a tree going out of its fucking way to straight up antagonise him was enough. Fucking hive-mind was what it was. First the frog and now the trees.

_What a bunch of assholes._

He opened his mouth, intend on turning and growling those exact words at the tree – he knew how ridiculous that was, thank you very much – when something heavy and cold settled against his throat. Someone cupped his chin from behind, holding it in a firm grip and wrenching it upwards.

‘If I were you,’ the person holding a knife to his throat whispered to him, ‘I’d tell my companion to turn around and put her hands up, lest she’d like to walk into a spear too.’

Aeneas’ would later admit that this wasn’t one of his best plans. It wasn’t even a plan, really.

‘Run,’ he hollered at his sister, scream dying in his throat when the blade was dug deeper into his skin. Deep enough to knick. He hissed quietly at the sting, feeling blood rise to the surface.

Puffs of air hit the shell of his ear and it wasn’t so much anger as confusion rising in him when he realised his captor was laughing.

‘Hm, that was quite an idiotic thing to do.’

‘Get away from my brother, bitch boy!’

Echo had, in fact, not run away. No, she’d whirled around when Aeneas had called out to her, saw that her brother was in danger and promptly hurled herself at the pair.

For one brief moment, his captor was stunned. However, he whistled so sharply Aeneas feared he would lose his hearing thirty seconds later. People appeared out of thin air, silent, deadly. Swords, daggers and arrows were pointed at Echo, who skittered to a halt a few metres before her brother, fury making her face its own as she spotted the blood on his throat.

Aeneas was torn away from his captor and roughly grabbed by two of his friends instead. At least he was able to get a good look at the sneaky fucker now.

The man moved into the hunting circle like he owned the very ground beneath his feet. His hair was short, except for one thin braid resting on his shoulder. Like those of his little hunting party, his face, neck and arms were covered in deep green paint, small yellow stones embedded in and around his eyebrows and stripes of equally yellow paint on his eyelids breaking the pattern. Aeneas caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the inside of the leader’s wrist, small, unassuming. Yellow, bordering on gold, against dark skin. A turtle. He frowned. That didn’t make any sense, they weren’t anywhere near a body of water suited for any turtles. At least if his sense of direction hadn’t decided to leave him alone to make a complete fool of himself.

_If he doesn’t give us his name, I’ll just call him Goldie. And the others will be Goldie 2, Goldie 3, Goldie 4…_

Spite truly was an underrated weapon. Usually, so was fear, which was exactly what Aeneas felt slamming into him like a brick wall when Goldie raised his spear and tipped Echo’s chin up with its blade. He started struggling in the hunters’ grasp but their hands only tightened their grip on his arms.

Goldie smiled smugly, showing entirely too many teeth in the process.

‘Bitch boy, huh? Not the most polite choice of words, little human.’

Echo glared up at Goldie. Aeneas sent a silent prayer to whatever gods were still alive that she may, for once, shut her mouth and not rise to the bait as she tended too when she felt the need to protect her family.

‘You pressed a knife to my brother’s throat,’ she replied, gritting her teeth. ‘Did you expect me to greet you like I might a neighbour?’

‘You should have thought about that before you trampled into territory you don’t belong in.’ He took a step back, gaze still fixed on her. ‘You are not from Kasserra.’

‘No,’ Aeneas chimed in, grateful for an opportunity to prove that they meant no harm. Misunderstandings could be easily resolved in a peaceful way. Given, of course, that the bastard and his friends kept their equipment away from his sister. Aeneas wouldn’t know what he would do if they so much as scratched her – he was a healer, Viktor damn it, he’d never really learned how to properly fight – but it wouldn’t be pretty. ‘We’re from Arcnara.’

That particular detail finally made Goldie look away from his sister, now practically pinning Aeneas in place with it instead. And being on the receiving end of the green gaze was extremely uncomfortable.

‘Arcnarans. You’re quite a long way from home. How come?’

‘We –‘

‘Desire for fresh air,’ Echo sharply bit out, now glaring at her brother, who only frowned in return.

Couldn’t she see that he was only trying to help them get out of this, frankly, uncomfortable situation? Maybe Caris’ paranoia had rubbed off on her. These people thought them imposters, and if he could convince them that he and his sister were just passing through, everything would work out just fine.

‘Fresh air.’

Goldie took a deep breath, looking just one more defiant answer away from pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘Do you think I’m stupid? That’s a rhetoric question, don’t answer it,’ he said, jabbing a finger in Echo’s direction. He sighed, turning to address his people. ‘Right then. They’re coming with us.’

‘Have you lost your mind, Joro?’ one of the women holding Echo hissed. Her eyes were the same muted amber as the stones embedded into her eyebrows. ‘Taking them with us? Even if they are Arcnaran, who’s to say they won’t go and get their friends as soon as we let them go?

‘You know it’s not up to us whether they walk away alive and well. They might die tonight.’

The way he said it, as if he was talking about the weather, deeply unsettled Aeneas. Great, they had encountered spirits a few days back and now, now they were being threatened. Sounded like something he wanted to experience every day for sure.

There were no more protests after what Goldie – Joro, apparently – had said, and so Aeneas and Echo were lead deeper into the labyrinth of vines and leaves.

‘You okay?’ he whispered to her, scared their new friends might have hurt her without him noticing.

‘No, I’m not. I’m scared out of my mind, Neas.’ She swallowed a few times. ‘But they didn’t hurt me if that’s what you’re asking. How’s your cut?’

He shrugged. It had stopped bleeding but it still stung. ‘How many times does it take for you to actually do what I say when I tell you to run? Damn it Echo, you didn’t listen whenever I said that to you back in third, and you didn’t listen now. This might cost you your life one day,’ he said, not sure if he should be annoyed with her, or terrified for her.

‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but the day I abandon you when you are clearly in danger is the day I die.’

Aeneas didn’t know what to say to that, so he stayed silent. After a few seconds, a smug grin appeared on his sister’s lips.

‘You walked straight into a spear?’

‘Oh shut it, I thought it was a branch.’

‘So you were ready to walk straight into a branch instead?’

‘I am incapable of doing anything straight you little shithead, and it was an accident!’ His face felt hot all over from embarrassment.

The woman who had spoken out against Goldie before turned around to them. ‘It is in your best interest to shut up or you will attract some unwanted attention and I do not fancy fighting a Riptar today.’

‘What’s a Riptar?’

She breathed harshly through her nose. ‘Just shut up for now and maybe I’ll tell you later.’

It took a while for the troop to reach the hunters’ hideout. Aeneas found himself unable to recognise half of the plants they passed on the way there, which irked him to no end and excited him simultaneously. An opportunity to learn something new had presented itself and there he was, at knifepoint, being dragged away from said opportunity. When he saw the Dove Wings, an overall deadly flower from blossoms to roots, guarding the entrance to a small tunnel, however, his curiosity evaporated.

Dove Wings were nasty pieces of work. Almost like dandelions, they could grow anywhere, but usually they were small, easy to handle and pluck when they appeared in someone’s garden or on the street. These were one metre in height, littered with small, light grey blossoms and sickly white leaves. They did not twist like other plants would have done, standing perfectly still, as if not even wind could move the delicate stems and persuade them to sway. They looked frightening against the swirling green entrance of the tunnel, quiet, promising, deadly. The flowers had once been called Serene Death. That was as far from the truth as could be. Death by Dove Wings was a lot of things, none of them even close to serene.

Ingesting the blossoms would let all blood vessels slowly dissolve, while ingesting the roots made for a nasty acid that burned through tissue at an alarming rate. The stems caused execrating pain, hallucinations and even blindness, if applied directly onto the eyes. They were by far the most harmless part of the plant, though people were known to injure themselves to the point of death to make the pain stop. Lastly, the leaves of the plant caused their victim to choke on thin air. Someone had yet to find out why that was, yet – and Aeneas really could not blame them – no one dared to try and do some research. Too risky, the possibility of death too high to warrant experimenting.

It was a good thing the King had instructed the Arcnaran Guard to make sure any and all Dove Wings in the city were disposed of.

_One of the few good things he’s ever done._

Aeneas suppressed the urge to groan, remembering what the King – should he stop referring to him as such? – had said to Echo, what he had threatened to do.

He scowled at one of his captors when they pushed him forward into the tunnel. All sunlight was swallowed by the stone, the only source of light the eerily glowing moss growing on it. Aeneas turned his head, getting a good look at the fear on his sister’s face; the same fear that threatened to worm its way into his guts and make a home there after it had thoroughly corroded his insides.

‘Let me guess, Goldie,’ he said those words with no small amount of glee, revelling in the angry nose scrunch the nickname earned him. The shove he received by the woman with the bedazzled eyebrows was less fun and bound to leave a bruise. ‘The only way to your no doubt wonderful camp is this one?’

His face was grabbed harshly, chin tilted up so Aeneas had no choice but to face Goldie. The bastard was smiling down at him without any kindness, the green eyes blazing in a way that promised cruelty. Aeneas knew what danger looked like; he’d seen it written clear as day in the faces of adults and children alike in Arcnara, no matter the district. He narrowed his own eyes, staring back at Goldie, refusing to be intimidated. When Goldie looked over Aeneas’ shoulder to Echo, the older sibling snapped.

‘I didn’t want to fight you, Goldie, but trust me when I say that I won’t hesitate if you don’t keep your fucking distance.’

‘Didn’t?’

Aeneas’ bared his teeth, a war declaration disguised as a grimace. If he pulled it off correctly, it could even be interpreted as a grin. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a mirror to check whether it worked.

‘The more time I spend with you, the more I start to see the appeal of bashing your face in.’

Aeneas liked to think that his stance was good, good enough for him to not be knocked over very easily. It wasn’t always the truth. Right now, his head was spinning and he was stumbling a little, trying to catch up with how fast Goldie had struck him. He could hear Echo go spewing all sorts of truly vile insults at the man before him. No matter how much his cheek throbbed though, at least now he knew that Goldie’s cruelty burned like the ambers around his eyes.

‘Now, don’t say things you don’t mean, sweetheart,’ Goldie hissed, all pretence of pleasantry gone. ‘You will stand trial for intruding, and whatever fate will be bestowed upon you, you will embrace it without complaint.’

‘Oh yeah?’

Goldie smiled, a serene expression crossing his face and smoothing out all the anger creases. Alarm bells went off in Aeneas’ head. ‘Yeah,’ he breathed. ‘Because if you resist, I’ll hurt your sister.’

Ice settled in Aeneas’ stomach, clashing violently with the fire roaring to life there. His limbs ached, blood freezing in his veins and suddenly flowing again with a intensity that almost made his head spin.

Goldie patted his cheek once, harder than he needed too.

‘Let’s go folks.’

Aeneas threw himself against the stone with as much vigour as he could, effectively bruising his left shoulder, but not accomplishing much else. It was stone after all, and somewhere at the back of his mind, a voice sounding suspiciously like Jonathan kept reminding him that it would not move no matter how many times Aeneas charged at it – he was more likely to completely shatter his shoulder in the process. And the older Torr sibling was well aware of that. He just didn’t care.

Echo and him had been blindfolded minutes before they entered the camp and there had been a few minutes for the siblings to simply breathe and try to adjust their senses to their surroundings. Then, their peace had ended rather abruptly as Aeneas had been torn away, Echo yelling at their captors for separating them. Aeneas’ sides still hurt from laughing at the frankly weird insults his sister had come up with. He’s still been laughing when he was thrown into a cell. He had stopped when he’d heard a panicked scream, if he were to guess, ten minutes ago.

Since then, he’d been screaming himself hoarse, calling Goldie every name under the sun and throwing himself against the stone bars. Either everyone in the camp was deliberately ignoring him, or they were deaf. He knew it was the former. He was fuming.

_They can only ignore me for so long. Sooner or later, someone has to show up._

‘Face me you cowards!’ he screamed, desperation and fear mixing on his tongue and making him sound like a wounded animal backed into a corner. Those assholes had his sister. Those assholes could be holding trial without giving them a chance to defend themselves.

He charged at the bars again, dull pain shooting up his arm as he collapsed against it, breathing harshly through his nose. The stone was cold against his forehead, yet didn’t give him the reprieve he craved for, both his body and his mind running at full speed. It was way too warm in the cell, even though the stone was damp.

His lips were quivering and he gripped the bars so hard he could feel his hands starting to ache. He could die tonight. It settled like lead in his stomach and ran merry circles in his mind. A sobering thought leading an army of regrets.

Aeneas couldn’t take it, pushed himself away from the bars and punched one of the walls surrounding him. His hand slipped on the damp stone, sliding along the walls and splitting skin. Swallowing back a sob he started pacing, turning angry eyes upwards. There was no sky, only harsh darkness. He spread his arms, hissing at the dull throbbing in his shoulder and the way his split skin protested against any and all movement.

‘You took my parents,’ he whispered harshly, addressing gods he knew wouldn’t answer, couldn’t hear him. ‘You did nothing and just took them as soon as their bodies grew cold. I didn’t get to say goodbye, didn’t get to bury their ashes or lay down stones for them.’

The sound wrenching its way out of his throat was horrifying, filled with grief and the anger that only took hold of children deprived of family. The kind that found them at a young age, mated with disappointment and slowly let its offspring claw its way into the child’s mind and body; to stay and feast on regrets, set on making sure nothing would ever be forgotten, least of all the wrongs bestowed upon them.

‘And now,’ he giggled, ‘ now you’re taking my sister before me. Are you making sure I’ll see her body swaying in the wind you treasure? That her blood flows before my eyes and becomes the tears I’ll spill? How cruel can you be?’

No one answered him and he didn’t expect anyone to. He bit his lip and slid down the wall he’d punched, drawing his knees up to his chest. Closing his eyes, he tried to recall the sun residing in his sister’s eyes, the stars he’d always loved watching. What appeared before his mind’s eye was the moon and its gentle light, keeping him company on the darkest and longest of nights, gracing him with a smile and a laugh as light as the doorbell in his favourite bakery.

He would miss his moon.


	12. Not friends but traitor and betrayed

Jonathan

‘Who is the fool, the fool who keeps coming back? Hurrying through town, laid bare for all to see and sneer at him. Who is the fool, who is the fool, the fool who’s draped in silver and silk, whose teeth are bloodied with his lover’s blood? Nobody knows the fool, but everyone knows he will come back.’

The children's song was infuriatingly catchy. Jonathan was sure they were talking about him. He didn’t care, too consumed by rage to really pay attention to what little children sung about him. Or perhaps it wasn’t about him at all, perhaps it was about some poor fellow who’d gone nuts years ago and they just delighted in reminding him of his pain. Children could be awfully cruel like that.

Sighing, he put down his pen. The black words on the yellow parchment had lost their meaning a while ago, if they had ever had one to begin with. Jonathan wasn’t even aware of what he was writing, his head not connected to his hands. A frustrated noise rose in the back of his throat, neither sob nor groan, but something altogether foreign, when he stared at his hands and the smooth surface of his desk.

His wallowing was ridiculous. So Aeneas had left with his sister. What of it?

Balling his hands into fists so hard his fingernails cut into the soft flesh of his palms, Jonathan took deep, shaky breaths.

‘You’re being pathetic, Cullum,’ he hissed, voice no louder than a whisper, yet loud enough to echo in his office. There were no other sounds, no whispers of flames, no laughter of servants passing by and telling jokes. The wind was as quiet as Jonathan had ever known it to be, not even caressing the drapes of his windows.

Silence had taken hold of his world and would not unhook its claws, too content with suffocating him. The young ruler wanted to scream, to tear his office stone from stone and cut his hands open. Anything to relieve himself of the persistent aching.

‘Enough is enough.’

Jonathan stood, aggressively bunching up red robes and walking to the floor length mirror next to the door. It presented him with an ugly picture: dark circles against sickly pale skin, red rimmed eyes dulled by grief and with a watery look to them, oily, mussed up hair. He snarled at his own reflection, straightening up.

_Aeneas is gone. You cannot change this and it does not matter anymore. This friendship is over and you will heal. Say it._

He couldn’t. Jonathan stood there, gaping like a fish as he willed his tongue to move, to speak the words his head threw at him and make them reality. He found he couldn’t, and started to tremble.

_Say it._

Words had never failed him before. Why, oh why did they do it now?

**_Say it._ **

Jonathan felt it rising inside him like a storm, the unrelenting pressure of rain beating down on his heart. An ocean lay before him, wronged and angry and so very, very hurt. There was water to his left, beating against his resolve in hopes of forming him to its whims like it had done to stone for centuries. The water to his right was calmer, trying to pull him in instead of pushing him. There was nowhere to go. Drowning was his destiny.

‘My Lord?’

Jonatan did not turn, didn’t address the person who had dared to enter without knocking. He wanted to be alone. Was that such a hard feat to accomplish?

‘Lord Cullum?’

_Go away. I don’t want you here._

Hands grabbed his shoulders, forced him to turn around. They were careful, as if scared he would break like glass beneath them.

‘Jonathan?’

Meeting Akta’s concerned gaze was easy. Holding it proved too difficult a task for Jonathan. He was tired. So very tired, and so very angry.

‘Akta,’ he said, voice rough and from the way Akta’s nose wrinkled in disgust, Jonathan knew he had bad breath. He tried to think back to when he had last had water. He couldn’t remember. ‘I don’t think I called for you.’

Akta slowly shook his head, eyes roaming Jonathan’s face and taking in his appearance. ‘You did not. I apologise for barging in like this, my Lord. An urgent matter has come up and it requires your attention.’

‘I see.’

If he’d had the strength, Jonathan would have done as Akta did and cringed at the apathy in his voice.

‘Whatever is the problem?’

Akta hesitated, hands tightening on Jonathan’s shoulders briefly. He was nervous and that finally shook Jonathan out of his stupor. He knew Akta’s different kinds of nervousness. This was a new one, one that didn’t so much shake as tremble, takingover his faithful jeweller’s soul and making him jiggle slightly, as if trying to get rid of pins and needles. Alarm bells rung in Jonathan’s head.

‘Akta,’ he said softly, reaching out but stopping shortly before touching the nervous man. ‘Tell me.’

Warm eyes clenched shut in an attempt to gather courage, and Jonathan waited patiently, refusing to start fidgeting. He wanted an answer but showing his eagerness would only serve to further worsen Akta’s state.

‘There’s a traitor amongst the guards and they captured him. He’s in your dungeons, my Lord, nobody dares to speak to him and we do not know what to do with him.’

Jonathan waited for a lightning strike, the rumble of thunder or the dull thud of stone falling onto stone. News like that usually brought some sort of sound with them. This time, there was nothing except silence. He breathed out, mentally berating himself for hoping otherwise. He was stuck with silence and shuddered at the revelation. Silence was a curse and as it was, he could not think of a cure.

‘Take me to him.’

‘Are you sure you…’

Eyes blazing, he stepped forward, forcing Akta to make room and get away from the door.

‘Now, Akta. If there is a traitor to be dealt with, I’d rather do so immediately,’ he hissed, not waiting for the jeweller to nod as he opened the door and shot him an expectant look.

Akta rolled his eyes at him. ‘As you wish. For the record, I would want you to wash your hair beforehand.’

‘He’s a prisoner, Akta. If he has the balls to comment on my appearance, it’ll be because he’ll want to spend his last words being defiant,’ Jonathan answered in a sing-song voice, undeterred by his friend’s sudden sass.

Having his back turned to Akta, who closed the door behind them with a soft click, he didn’t so much see him freeze as heard the sharp intake of breath.

‘You’ll have him executed?’ the jeweller asked disbelievingly, as if the words that had left Jonathan’s mouth were appalling things taken from nightmares.

Jonathan snorted. ‘Executed, yeah, right, as if I could do that,’ he turned to Akta, frowning slightly at the hesitant expression greeting him, ‘Are you alright?’

‘Of course, my Lord.’

It was such an obvious lie Jonathan wanted to tug at his hair in an effort not to lose it. He wasn’t quite sure what wounded him more: Akta thinking he would be fooled by such a weak dispute, or Akta not being comfortable enough with him to tell the truth about what was bothering him.

The walk to the dungeons was a silent, albeit hurried, one. Neither Akta nor Jonathan said anything, though Jonathan wagered it was for vastly different reasons. Were he a better man, he would ask Akta what he had done to be undeserving of the truth. Were he a better ruler, he would demand honesty. As it was, Jonathan didn’t think of himself as a good man nor a good ruler. He opted for silence instead.

They stopped in front of the heavy wooden doors leading to the cells. Jonathan sighed, holding up a hand to signal Akta to stop; the man stilled immediately.

‘I don’t need you down there, Akta. You are free to go and continue with your work as you please,’ he said coldly.

‘My Lord, are you sure it’s wise for you to face a prisoner like that?’ Akta’s voice didn’t shake, betraying nothing but concern. Nevertheless, Jonathan thought that this was just one step too far.

_Wrong move._

His nose wrinkled and he felt heat creep up his neck and face. Willing himself to stay where he was, drawn up to his full height and facing the doors instead of Akta, he hissed, gritting his teeth. In the end, he didn’t succeed and whirled around.

‘Like _what_ , jeweller?

Akta did not shy away from Jonathan’s glare but started wringing his hands nervously. Something inside Jonathan delighted at having reduced someone to such gestures, clear displays of weakness. Disgust at feeling such joy forced its way up his stomach and into his mouth. It tasted worse than bile.

‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. You just…you don’t have any jewellery on you and I feel a tad insulted by that.’ Akta laughed, and by Viktor, it sounded so forced Jonathan wondered if it hurt. ‘You haven’t asked for my services in quite a while, my Lord.’

_Liar, liar, liar, liar, they will set your spawn on fire, liar, liar, liar, liar…stop it!_

Jonathan shook his head. He tried to block out the sudden assault of red fog threatening to overtake his vision, tried to drown out the taunting voices overlapping with enraged screams for something he couldn’t give them because he didn’t understand what they were calling for. He caught himself scratching his wrist. His skin was too dry again, a bath was in order. Perhaps it would stop the voices and visions too.

He prayed it would.

‘Rest assured, Akta, your services will be required soon enough. And here I thought I was doing you a favour, giving you a few days off from attending to me.’

There was more forced laughter and Jonathan knew his joke had fallen flat. His energy, however, was almost used up. He could already feel the waves lapping at him again, trying to push him against rough stone tearing his skin apart worse than any whip ever could. He swallowed heavily. If he got this over with quickly, he could return to his office or retire to his wing without anyone disturbing him for at least another three hours.

He was almost through the doors, nodding to the guards stationed at the smooth staircase gleaming in the firelight, when Akta spoke again.

‘You could have him executed, Jonathan.’ His eyes were full of concern and pain, making them appear watery and bigger than they were. It reminded the ruler of a look he’d seen in the faces of dirty children on the street, caked in filth thrown from window sills and bony limbs thin enough to snap without much force. He’d seen that look in his own face often enough to find it both pitiful and revolting.

‘You’re the ruler of Gynasou. Whatever happens to this prisoner is your call, not his Majesty’s.’

He didn’t have time for this.

‘Akta,’ he called sharply, not concerned whether the guards were listening, ‘speak your mind or go back to work, please.’

‘Just remember you hold some power of your own, my Lord. There is no need to defer to someone who does not know this city, this country, and its people.’

_But I don’t know them either!_

Jonathan motioned for the doors to be closed behind him and went down the stairs as graceful as he could manage. He didn’t acknowledge Akta’s last words, forcefully shoving them to the back of his mind to keep him awake that night.

Akta knew as much as anyone else in this palace. So why did he try and pretend Jonathan was of any importance at all?

The dungeons stank of rot, piss, and other things Jonathan did not want to identify. The air was oppressing, heavy with agony and fear. Shadows danced in merry circles on the wall, sure to tease and taunt lonely souls into seeing loved ones long lost.

Jonathan shivered, wrapping his outer robe tighter around himself. Turning to one of the guards - who might have been carved from stone for all that they moved or showed emotions – he commanded them to take him to the prisoner. He was prepared for anything, that he was sure of.

He turned out to be wrong. He’d been prepared to face to traitor and judge him as well as he could, expecting a blubbering mess or at least a soul fearful of their fate.

What greeted him instead was frightening calmness. The man was sitting in the middle of the cell, neither hidden by the shadows nor right at the front of his prison as so many others had done before him for a chance to claw and kiss at their ruler’s robes in hopes or mercy.

Jonathan quietly bid the guards to leave and they did without hesitation.

‘And who might you be, then?’

The prisoner smiled at him, open and honest, as if they were friends meeting for lunch rather than traitor and betrayed.

‘Is my Lord demanding my name?’

‘I am not demanding anything. You are allowed to die without a name to your person, soldier.’

The prisoner’s eyes lit up, dark blue gleaming dangerously in the firelight.

‘I am still a soldier in your eyes, my Lord?’

Jonathan raised an eyebrow. ‘Right now, you are nothing but a nuisance and a waste of my time,’ he drawled, ignoring the laugh it elicited from the prisoner. ‘But I am not so cruel as to strip you of your identity.’

The man hummed, lazily leaning forward. ‘And my profession is my identity?’

He was starting to annoy Jonathan, who felt a headache coming on from the twisted words. He simply did not have the energy for that. Not on that day.

‘You are not helping yourself by being uncooperative. Whatever stupid thing you did…’

That got the prisoner’s attention. He almost fell forward in his attempt to get to the bars separating them as fast as possible. Jonathan startled, moving back, but not quickly enough to save his robes from being grabbed. Being held by the collar against damp iron was the last thing he’d wanted to happen.

‘You don’t, don’t know what I’m in for?’ he asked carefully, too softly for Jonathan to believe it was genuine disbelief the man portrayed.

Jonathan narrowed his eyes at him, drowning out the high pitched sounds of ice breaking ringing in his ears. ‘Let go off me,’ he growled, refusing to paw at the man’s hands. He would not stoop so low. He was the ruler, he was in control.

They stared at each other for a few heartbeats, the ringing in Jonathan’s ears growing louder by the second. It diminished as soon as the prisoner let go of him.

‘My apologies, my Lord,’ he whispered, head bowed. ‘But do you intend to judge me from one meeting alone?’

Jonathan stepped away from the cell, breathing heavily. He could have the guy hang from the highest tower just for touching him like that. He could make up a story of the man’s crimes without knowing they held an ounce of truth and be done with it. He could get rid of the threat in less than an hour. He swallowed loudly.

‘No, I do not,’ he said, noting the man’s surprise with gnawing guilt. What did his people think of him if they reacted to decency like this? ‘I will return the following days and we will talk. When I am satisfied with what I have found, only then will I judge you. And only then will you answer for your crimes.’

Jonathan left without looking back once, not interested in whatever else the prisoner might have to say. He briefly stopped when the prisoner yelled, telling him the name he had asked for. Ignoring the way his gut clenched uncomfortably as the silence returned full force, he made a mental note to go to Omra and ask for any and all documents they had on one Sikan Wenra.

Jonathan returned to the dungeons the following day, as he had promised. Sikan seemed surprised but strangely relieved. Jonathan did not think to ask why and Sikan did not tell. They weren’t friends, after all. They were traitor and betrayed.

‘Where did you get all the information from? I thought Omra hated aristocrats?’

Jonathan chuckled in spite of himself. ‘Oh they do, though I wager they now hate me more than anyone else, apart from the king, maybe.’

Sikan’s eyes grew wide. ‘You know they hate the king?’

‘Of course I know. Everyone does, or at least everyone who actually steps a foot inside the library and has the misfortune of encountering Omra instead of one of their apprentices.’

‘And you don’t care? You don’t plan on doing anything against it?’

‘Why would I?’ Jonathan looked at Sikan, sure that his face betrayed just how stupid he thought the question to be. ‘People are free to love and hate. I’m not an exception because I rule them in his stead. Many surely opposed me being chosen and I cannot fault them for it.’

Silence followed his words and Jonathan regretted having said them. He hated silence more and more with each passing day. The sound of ice breaking he’d heard before had died down, and now only the sound of another’s voice was the only thing keeping Jonathan from going slightly mad.

‘Omra didn’t want me destroying their carefully sorted archives, so they helped me out, After telling me how buffoonish it was not to ask for your last name because,’ he inhaled, and in a poor imitation of Omra’s voice said, ‘Do you have any idea how many Sikan’s there are in this city, my lord? No? Not as many as you’d think because this is not Izmet, but more than you would expect.’

Sikan snorted and they continued to talk about everything and nothing. If Jonathan shared a bit too much, it was to gain intel on his prisoner. After all, they weren’t friends. They were traitor and betrayed.

Sikan asked him, in a detached voice and with eyes emptier than Jonathan’s personal wing in the castle, where his dead went.

The ruler didn’t understand and asked the soldier what he meant by that. Sikan did not smile and neither did he weep, but his entire demeanour greatly unsettled Jonathan.

‘Where do your dead go, Jonathan?’

Jonathan fled and did not return until the following day, ignoring Sikan calling him by his name. As he lay awake at night, he tried telling the doubt gnawing away at his mind that they was not getting attached to a prisoner. He was not seeking companionship, he was fine with being untouchable. Aeneas’ departure had shown how much being attached hurt when the people you care about ultimately leave.

The silence was deafening and tears of frustration ran down his cheeks, hot against his freezing skin. He’d left the doors to his balcony open.

Jonathan Cullum was not getting attached. After all, Sikan wasn’t his friend. He was a traitor, and if Jonathan told himself that time and time again, perhaps the words would stop sounding like a lie and tasting like ash in his mouth when he uttered them to himself in the darkness.

He’d wanted to return in the morning, he really had. He did not, instead spending the majority of his day staring at his reflection in the mirror, taking in the bags under his eyes and the angry scratch marks on his throat. His scalp still stung from pulling at his hair when the silence had become too loud during the night, too overwhelming to deal with. He could hear everything and nothing all at once.

It was akin to walking in a dream, without a true inkling of what to do. He had become a spectator in his own life, watching the colourful masses of Arcnara blur together from afar. He was neither hungry nor thirsty, yet his stomach felt like an endless void, never sated and turning in on itself in an effort to find something nourishing. His throat was dry, a well that would remain so no matter how many times he swallowed to try and get rid of the feeling.

A helpless laugh bubbled up in his throat, breathy and terribly wet. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by the shards of his life, he silently wept for the sounds he had lost. His breathing grew more erratic as his mind assaulted him with images, memories, he had wanted to forget, to leave in the past; frozen socks on the streets of Arcnara, stuck to the small bodies of children whose glassy eyes were turned to the skies. Parents forced to use dead bodies as means to ignite a fire, siblings falling asleep in each other’s arms, knowing fully well they would not awake to see the sun paint the city in hues of gold and orange. Cowering in a dark alley, surrounded by blood and limbs after having screamed until his lungs burned when two men had chased him. A hand, reaching out and hoisting him up, someone shushing him, the green eyes of his saviour.

_What a load of bullshit._

When Jonathan returned to the dungeons, there was no sign of the guards normally stationed there. The doors hung open, taken almost completely out of their hinges. It should have made Jonathan turn around, sound an alarm and rally a few guards behind him. Naturally, he didn’t. He was too fed up with how the entire week had gone to care much. Restlessness resided in his bones as an itch he could not hope to scratch in a million years and fatigue had left canyons beneath his eyes. Irritation was a small flame kindling in his belly, and the possible intruder in his palace was a bottle of oil he gladly welcomed.

Whoever had invited themselves into his home, they at least left things in a more or less orderly fashion, Jonathan observed with a half amused quirk of his lips. The guards meant to protect the dungeons were knocked out, neatly tied up with a small bow at the front, their weapons lying in a pile to the side.

He giggled, pointing at the different weapons and playing a small game of enee-meeney-miney-moo to decide which he would borrow. Shedding his outer robe and finally picking up a small morning star, he headed in the direction of Sikan’s cell.

A mop of white hair, tied together in a ponytail, and a familiar voice hissing profanities as the intruder struggled to find the right key under Sikan’s amused, albeit tired, gaze greeted him. Shock immobilised the ruler for one heartbeat before rage took over. It burned as something snapped behind his eyes. He was so exhausted, so disappointed and so very, very angry.

‘Is this supposed to be some sort of joke?’ he yelled, aware of how his voice cracked at the end.

It did have the desired effect, making Caris curse and whirl around. She did not have any weapons on her.

_How curious._

‘Lord Cullum, please keep your voice down, I’d hate for our friends too wake up earlier than anticipated,’ Caris hissed back, going back to fumbling with the lock.

Jonathan lunged at her, throwing the morning star against a nearby wall and pinning her to the ground. She stared up at him, relaxed and calculating.

‘And now? Will you kill me, Jonathan?’

It infuriated him to no end, how calm and collected she was.

‘I should and oh, you have no idea how satisfactory that would be.’ _Lie_. ‘Was this a test, a fucking order? To judge whether I was still fit to remain?’ He got right up in her face, undisguised hatred filling his voice.

‘Did he think I was unfit to decide the fate of a traitor because I did not see what Aeneas was doing? Huh? Did he send you to watch me fail and then remove me like a nasty bug for being too weak?!’

Grey eyes betrayed nothing but complete and utter confusion. Jonathan was, however, on a roll.

‘First Aeneas, now Loktur. Who’s next, huh? Who’ll be the next one to decide I’ve no use any more? Who will be the next one to leave, to subject me to nothingness?’

His voice bounced off the walls, echoing along the corridors of the dungeons, disturbing the silence. He was grateful for it. He’d had enough of silence to last a lifetime. Squeezing his eyes shut, he pressed down on her with as much weight as possible, even though she hadn’t made any moves to free herself during his small tirade.

‘I can’t stand it, Caris. There is too much silence, and it’s so unbearably _loud_. Why would they leave me to fight alone? Is it because of what I’ve done? What I am? I’ve tried,’ he inhaled sharply, fighting to speak around the lump in his throat, ‘I’ve tried so hard to make it stop. But now that all the noise is gone I can’t bear it. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I can’t. I can’t be better. I didn’t chose to be a monster, I never wanted to be, but I can’t stop it.’

He broke after that, the stress weighing down on him, crushing him. Every sob wrenching itself from his throat hurt more than it brought relief.

‘If you want to end it, just do for fuck’s sake! I refuse to be toyed with if I am to be executed.’

There was a click and the creaking of heavy doors. Jonathan wrenched his eyes open to be greeted with pity written all over Caris’ face.

‘You’ll be alright, Jonathan. I’ll make sure of that. Just worry about resting for now,’ she said quietly, softly, uncharacteristically so.

After that, there was only darkness.


	13. Legacy of a false king

Echo 

The ground was unforgiving beneath her feet, hard enough for her to feel the vibrations of her steps resonate in her bones. Air pierced her lungs like spears might warm and waiting flesh, cold enough to hurt with every short inhale. Shadows nipped at her soles, enjoying the hunt, claiming the trees and bushes for themselves with every passing minute.

Echo wanted to scream to drive the remaining rage from her body, but in order to do so, she would have to stop and catch her breath. She grit her teeth, forcing herself to pick up speed and ignore the aching that had nestled itself in her muscles. She didn’t know how long she had been running. But it had got dark a while ago, and she was running out of time. Every minute she wasted could mean her brother’s death.

Echo’s sight, limited as it was, grew blurry and her nose closed up uncomfortably. She tried to hold back her tears. It proved to be a futile attempt.

Skittering to a halt, leaves rustling beneath her feet, she turned this and that way a few times. Echo ignored the tears streaming down her face, as hot against her skin as her blood boiled beneath it.

‘Come on, come on, there has to be a way out of this,’ she muttered, wiping away the sweat gathered on her forehead, pinning some strands of her hair there.

She started pacing, shaking her hands all the while. ‘Okay, okay, deep breaths, Echo. Aeneas isn’t dead, not yet, he’s still alive and kicking. Or screaming, in his case. How to get him out of there…there won’t be a trial until morning, if there will be one at all.’

Swallowing a few times to get rid of the urge to babble until she ran out of air, she stopped pacing, clapping her hands together. Any and all cold chilling her skin and burrowing its way into her bones eviscerated on the spot. Determination roared to life within her chest and with it, a rush of blazing heat.

‘Well then,’ she said, ‘hopefully Kasserra is that way.’

Echo knew she should feel guilty for what she was about to do. Every muscle in her body was once again screaming at her, though this time for vastly different reasons: where they had ached and demanded for rest before, now they screamed at her to stop and turn around. Echo persisted and, with a sinking feeling in her gut, realised she was considering turning against her cause, her beliefs.

If she was unable to resolve the matter peacefully upon arriving at Kasserra, very well. If left without any other option, she would organise a riot, play on people’s devotion instead. Never mind that devotion to a dead tyrant was as bad as actually supporting said tyrant when he was alive.

She was, however, very sure of one thing and one thing alone: Whatever it might take, Aeneas would not die.

In the end, it took her four attempts to find a road, which was probably only used by travellers as opposed to traders, and ultimately, her way to Kasserra. Echo found herself sighing in relief when she walked through the town’s gates. Her relief quickly evaporated and made way for desperation.

‘Please, just listen to me!’ Echo was cut off when the fifth door slammed in her face.

She muffled a frustrated scream in her hands, slumping down on the sidewalk. Kasserra was a small town. The houses didn’t differ very much from the huts back in Arcnara’s fourth district; they too, looked like they had seen better days, strange moss that changed colours depending on how the light of the lanterns hit it covering the walls.

Under any other circumstances the town might have interested her. While she wasn’t so much interested in the moss as her brother would be, this town surely had its very own interesting story, a part it had played in the history of Nuerma. The weathered golden paint flaking off the bricks spoke of age and endurance. The lanterns, gleaming and flickering, beckoned her to explore the dark alleys, few as there were. To let herself be lured into voices whispering from the shadows was tempting, but she could get lost too quickly in what pictures history painted.

Echo shook her head and took a deep breath, steeling herself to try and find someone who would help her. There had to be someone, anyone.

_Anyone will do. Anyone at all._

The middle of the night found her frustrated, angry, and close to tears. Kasserra’s population had either turned the other way as fast as they could when they saw her on the street, or did not bother to open their doors at all when she knocked.

Almost all of the lanterns had been snuffed out, everyone slowly turning in for the night. Echo wanted to scream so badly, to wake them all up again and demand their help like some petulant child. She knew she couldn’t do that, however. She wouldn’t. Nodding to herself and forcing her shoulders back, she prepared to march up and down the streets again, trying her luck once more. A door being opened and something heavy hitting the pavement behind her caught her attention, however.

A man, flushed red and panting angrily, stood above the person he’d thrown out of the house. He opened his mouth and let out a string of profanities rapidly, too fast for Echo to keep up.

‘Mark my words, no one ain’t ever taking you back unless you come to your bloody senses!’

Echo was reminded of the small children who stole in order to keep their families and themselves from starving. How a trader had once stood above Liam, a boy of five, and screamed bloody murder about him stealing silk. It had been a ridiculous notion, of course. Liam was notorious for stealing apples, passionfruit, pomelo…never silk. But the trader hadn’t cared, screaming and raging until Liam had been in tears and started screaming back. Echo had seen the slap coming, had been rooted to the spot in terror, clutching her skirts. Her body had refused to move even an inch. Aeneas had jumped between the trader and Liam, and had had the bruise to show for it for days.

This man, dressed in linen and standing above someone he had shoved to the ground violently, was already raising his hand. Echo saw it coming. Her body would not obey her, would not let her move an inch. The man was ready to strike.

‘No,’ she croaked out, voice breaking, yet loud enough to make the man turn to her. She swallowed, then tried again, this time digging up the long forgotten anger she’d felt at seeing her brother get hit. Her voice dripped with it. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’

‘You that bitch that keeps wandering around?’

‘Maybe,’ she answered, standing her ground and raising her chin in defiance. ‘But that’s none of your business, now is it? Go away.’

He puffed out his chest, unaware of how his attention was now fully on her, allowing his previous victim a chance to crawl away from him.

‘And just who are you to tell me what to do, eh? I run this town.’

The poor guy on the ground was almost out of the mayor’s reach.

_Just a little further._

Ignoring the way her knees buckled, Echo stood up even straighter. If this clown wanted to go toe to toe with her, she would not back down. Her nose wrinkled in disgust.

‘Was there no one else?’

His face contorted and for a moment he reminded Echo of Lord Mirasra, who had ordered Omra to supply him with the most valuable of history tomes free of charge. When Omra had told him to go fuck himself on one of his unnecessarily large golden chandeliers, his face had taken on the exact same ugly shade of red. Like one of the candles lit at the festival of suns.

Echo smirked. It truly was the colour of spoiled men unused to not getting their way.

‘Listen ya little shit, how about I let you go nice and easy if you shut up now. Wouldn’t wanna hurt you,’ he leered, ‘would I?’

Echo bowed mockingly, too dramatic to be taken for an act of respect. ‘Do forgive me, but I don’t believe you.’

He glowered at her, striding up to her and getting too close to comfort, yet Echo remained where she was. She didn’t trust herself to take a step, neither forward not back.

‘Maybe doll,’ he whispered, his bad breath making her eyes water, ‘you should. Clever little things like you don’t last very long.’

Echo braced herself for what was to come, hoping she’d unfreeze to duck at the right moment. A large wooden pole, however, came down upon the mayor’s head, knocking him out cold.

There were moments in everybody’s life where something so utterly predictable happened that it was almost impossible to process. This was nothing if not one of them. It was almost comical how the man who’d towered over her was now laying at her feet, completely unaware what was going on around him. She poked him with one of her feet. Not a nice thing to do, perhaps, but too good an opportunity to resist. Her boot left a smudge of dirt on his cheek.

‘Oh crap, are you okay?’

She tore her gaze away from the unconscious asshole, pleasantly surprised to find the guy who’d crawled away from said asshole holding the pole. He still had it half raised in question, as if unsure whether one well delivered punch had been enough.

His skin was brown, lighter than hers, tinged with copper. A crooked nose, one that had been broken one too many times, almond shaped eyes and short black hair. He helped her up, repeating his question. This time he sounded even more concerned.

‘I’m fine, just a little shaken,’ she said, giving him a small smile he returned with a big one of his own. ‘Thank you for knocking him out.’

He chuckled, one hand rubbing his neck awkwardly. ‘I’ve never done something like this. Just kind of hoped if I swung this hard enough he’d stay down. Shut his big mouth for a while.’ Remembering his manners, he held out his hand abruptly. ‘I’m Kairon, by the way. Thanks for sticking up for me.’

‘I’m Echo. And no problem, I’m just sorry I didn’t do much more than yell.’

He looked at her, seemingly puzzled. ‘What? That was great! You helped me without one of us getting hurt! That’s amazing.’

‘I, I guess,’ she stuttered, trying to find her footing within the conversation while Kairon happily babbled on, telling her all about how the mayor was an even bigger asshole than she could imagine. Looking at him, standing there and swinging the pole around like an extension of his arm, dragging names of citizens through the mud, Echo felt amusement swell in her chest.

_Anyone will do. Anyone at all._

No, she decided, not just anyone would do. She wanted his help, Kairon’s help.

It was almost baffling how ready he was to help her. ‘You don’t have to,’ she hastily reassured him, which only made his grin grow wider. ‘Please don’t help me because you think you owe me something.’

Kairon tutted, waving her concerns off like one would swat away fruit flies. ‘Echo, calm down. I wouldn’t have offered my help if I didn’t want to help. Sounds like quite the predicament you and your brother have found yourselves in.’ He sighed, starting to walk in circles.

‘Okay so, just to recap, your brother’s been imprisoned by the Ambers, and…’

Echo frowned. ‘The Ambers? Is that what they call themselves?’ Her face lit up and she started talking faster, trying to find an explanation or a link to the name and what limited knowledge she had of Gynasou’s different clans and tribes, villages and cities. ‘Is it because of the stones? I think they were ambers, and those people had tattoos on the inside of their wrists in the same colour. I don’t know why they would choose a turtle but I’ve seen merchants in Arcnara selling all kinds of animals carved from different gems on the Jewel Market. Is there an amber mine somewhere?’

Kairon blinked, once, twice, three times. ‘Okay, okay, first of all you need to breathe. Okay, you breathe with me, yeah? Four times and then I’ll answer your questions to the, uh, best of my ability.’ The last sentence sounded an awful lot like a question.

Echo shot him a playful glare. ‘I’m not hyperventilating,’ she drawled. ‘Just curious.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what they call themselves, it’s just the only name we’ve ever used for them. Because of the stones, yeah. But it’s not because of some mine. It’s because of the Wandering Hill they live under.’

‘Wandering Hill? Wait…’ Echo turned to her bag, not sure why she’d been allowed to keep it when the Ambers had released her, but glad she had it. She hummed triumphantly when she pulled out the old tome. Had she gotten any farther in translating it? Not really. Echo was sure, however, she’d seen the name somewhere in the list of contents. That had been one of the most frustrating things to translate. She’d been tempted to hurl the book and various dictionaries at the wall once or twice. Occasionally. A few times. Most of the time.

‘Aha! Wandering Hills, there’s a chapter on them here, I knew it!’

Kairon whistled appreciatively. ‘Great! So what’s it say?’

Echo visibly deflated. ‘I don’t know,’ she mumbled.

‘Sorry, what was that?’

‘I don’t fucking know what it says, Kairon, I haven’t even gotten past the first twenty odd pages! And those are full of _threats_ and _warnings_ and three different rune alphabets!’

‘Huh, who needs that many on the first twenty pages,’ he huffed, nose scrunching up.

Echo shrugged in response. She had no answer to that, even though she wished she had. Gods knew she’d asked herself the same question countless times.

Kairon had apparently noticed how downtrodden she’d become, his hand returning to rubbing the back of his neck. ‘Okay, how about I tell you some of the stuff I know and when the time comes that you’ve translated this stuff, we can compare? Okay? Okay.’ He crouched in front of her, gesturing with his hands as he spoke. ‘So Wandering Hills are tortoises, really fucking big tortoises. And they’ve got this small ecosystem growing on them, and well, they, ah, they don’t exactly stay in one place very long, that’s where the wandering comes from.’

‘That explains the tattoos. What else?’

‘It’s said these tortoises have gemstones growing on them. There’s a shit ton of them out in Gynasou. Not as many as there used to be if you believe the scrolls, but not few either. The Ambers just live under one of them that happens to have amber growing on it.’ Kairon shrugged helplessly. ‘That’s about it.’

‘You said the Wandering Hills don’t stay in one place very long. How long have the Ambers been around?’ It didn’t make sense to Echo. Why would Kairon talk about them as if they’d always been in these woods when they didn’t stay?

‘Well, I’m reciting texts here. Things I’ve read about in my mother’s collection of scrolls before she, ah,’ there was a pregnant pause as he searched for the right word, ‘passed.’ He fiddled with his hands, looking at the ground. ‘I don’t know if the Ambers ever go somewhere else. As far as I know, people here complain about them the whole year, so they might as well just stay put. Even if it doesn’t add up. But who’s to say scrolls are always right?’

‘Yeah,’ Echo muttered, eyes trained on the darkness lurking beyond Kasserra’s walls. ‘Who’s to say they are indeed.’ She shook her head, brushing off her clothes as she stood. ‘We should go.’

‘A two men army, huh?’ Kairon chuckled, rubbing his arms in an attempt to get rid of his nervousness. It didn’t work. As the two of them got closer and closer to the edge of the forest, Kairon grew more and more restless. Echo stopped walking, soft grass beneath her feet rustling in the wind. She turned to him, reaching out but not touching until he nodded.

‘What’s up?’

He swallowed, eyes jumping between the trees and the ground, landing anywhere but on her. ‘I, ah, I should have probably told you earlier. I can’t go back once we cross that line.’ He pointed at the edge of the forest. ‘So I sincerely hope you won’t want to come to Kasserra a second time.’ Still not meeting her eyes, he laughed weakly.

It was Echo’s turn to be stunned. The words that wanted to come spilling out of her didn’t seem like the right ones but Kairon looked so stricken, waiting for the shoe to drop that she didn’t think. ‘Thank you. For telling me, I mean. Are you sure you want to leave?’

She would be disappointed if he chose to abandon her now, but she also had no means to make him stay. This decision wasn’t hers to make and neither was it hers to influence.

‘Yeah, I do,’ Kairon said softly, sadness and relief tinting his voice in equal measure. ‘The only good in this godforsaken village passed, her home destroyed. They call me by a name that’s not mine. There’s nothing for me there.’ He finally looked up at her, his eyes meeting hers without hesitation. Honey and sun, neither of them bearing malicious secrets. ‘I’m Kairon, descendant of the false king, son to Emira Lang. I have absolutely no impulse control and I’m an Elemental of the earth. I’d like to be your friend, if you’ll have me.’ His right hand balled into a fist. He placed it over his heart and then moved it to his forehead, bowing his head. A warrior in his own right, greeting someone he recognised as another.

Echo did the same. ‘I’m Echo Torr. I lead a small rebellion in Arcnara, together with a few friends, because I can’t stand what’s happening under a rule such as the king’s. I came looking for support throughout Gynasou with my brother. And I have no idea what I’m doing, which is a stupid thing to admit, but we’re being honest with each other, aren’t we?’ It was a rhetorical question, yet Kairon nodded nonetheless. She smiled at him, offering her hand. ‘I’ll be your friend if you’ll be mine.’

He snorted, clasping her hand in his and shaking it. ‘You strike a hard bargain Ms Revolutionary.’

She winked at him, pulling him with her as she took a step towards the trees. As soon as she got close enough that the next step would have her inside the forest, the red glow of the barrier became visible, reaching higher than she could see. ‘Ready?’

‘Yeah. Let’s bust your brother out of prison.’

They stepped forward.


	14. Fool’s gold, fool’s god

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, I am not satisfied with this chapter but as I have banned myself from rewriting anything before I am done, I’ll just have to live with it

It was quiet, near silent except for the dull clanging of the cooks in the kitchens of Viktor’s Hill. The world outside of the dark halls was clad in equal darkness, night having descended over Gynasou a while ago. Not unlike the flickering candles inside the castle, the stars were gleaming in the sky. Not twinkling though. In all of his life, the stars had never twinkled, merely gleamed in stony silence.

Perhaps, he mused, perhaps their silence was not stony at all. Stars, after all, were ancient. Some scripts said stars were even older than the gods. He thought that was rubbish. Some stars were surely older than the younger gods, but stars in general? They were not older than Njeri or Ciar, for example.

Did those two gods even matter anymore? Gynasou had one god they worshipped, one of their own who’d ascended due to his heroic actions, his duty to his people. Viktor had been a force to be reckoned with.

Loktur’s mouth twisted, corners twitching townwards. Viktor had been a good king, according to the scriptures and tales. The best in history, maybe. He’d connected all of Nuerma’s lands, uniting them and protecting the citizens. Loktur didn’t plan on upstaging him. Not exactly.

He planned on being better. Viktor had been a king, worshipped like only the gods had been when he walked the earth, and still worshipped like one in death. Viktor had wanted safety for his people.

Loktur knew he could be better, better than the god he’d looked up to all his life. He didn’t blame the young Torr for being a tad rebellious and questioning everything. Her background left a few things to be desired, especially her knowledge of history. She was an idealist, refusing to see the bigger picture. Which was why he didn’t string her up by her neck, letting her dance on air in the gallows down in fifth.

Maybe he had wanted to spare Jonathan the sight too. For all the power the boy possessed, he was ridiculously scared of violence. The young fool refused to see that it was necessary, necessary to keep peace, safety. Stability, which was all Loktur wanted.

Rebellion was dangerous. He didn’t know why people refused to see that. It was simple, really. What they had in Nuerma was stability, safety for both sides. So the people were, technically, divided. What did it matter? They were divided for their own safety. The magical side was still connected to their environment, safe from being cut off from it, as would be the case if they were to live in the cities. The non-magical side of the people was safe from being trampled, or hit with spells gone wrong, or robbed by power drunken hazards to society.

This little rebellion wanted to overthrow all of it. Loktur’s hands curled around the railing, clenching until his knuckles turned white. Foolish children, all of them! Hadn’t they ever read a history book? Weren’t they aware of what lead Viktor to shatter the world and make it anew?

Loktur found that telling seldom helped people rip off the veil they’d placed over their eyes. He’d had to start this game with the young Torr, had to give her the chance to see the dangers of uniting the people. She would spit and cry and scream at the injustice of it all, just like he had done so many years ago. But she would see, she would learn, know better in the end.

It was all he could ask of her. And if she refused, well- Loktur’s duty was to his people. If someone threatened them, he had to make sure the threat would be contained. A spark was not so hard to snuff out. Containing a fire was significantly more difficult.

He breathed in deeply, looking over his shoulder to see his wife in their bed. A warm smile, real and almost blinding, crossed his features. Jira was radiant, mind and tongue sharper than any sword he’d ever wielded. One day, perhaps, he would beat her at chess. He knew he wouldn’t, but having her point out the errors in his strategy was half the fun after all. Opportunities to learn were important, which was why he encouraged their children to try everything and anything, no matter if they were good at it or not.

He shook his head fondly, bowing mockingly to the stars. ‘You never helped anyone,’ he hissed. ‘You don’t get to be silent and disapprove with a clean conscience.’

They remained silent. Loktur sighed. Of course they’d remain silent, why wouldn’t they? They did not owe him anything, not yet at least. But oh, they would, once they recognised what a favour he was doing them all by interfering with this nonsense.

Comparing what the young Torr believed to be truth with what Loktur knew to be true was like comparing pyrite with gold. He shook his head and headed back inside, softly shutting the doors to the balcony behind him.

Viktor had been good to his people, a true king. How sad he was ultimately betrayed by his family, his own granddaughter marrying an Elemental. How foolish she must have felt when he took the babe and killed her. How foolish he must have looked when her knife had hit him right between the eyes. The daughter of those two had undoubtedly been an Elemental too. It was a good thing Kasserra was not a town filled with idiots. Killing her had been a mercy.

Loktur, on the other hand, would never be betrayed by his familym he knew that. They were too tightly knit for that. He cared too much about them to ever let them stray into their own doom like that.

Viktor was a god. Loktur would be an emperor.

‘Don’t.’

‘I did not say anything.’

‘You wanted to,’ he whispered, too tired to raise his voice. ‘Please don’t, Njeri. Not today.’

She narrowed her eyes at him, yet heeded his plea and merely continued to tower over him. His words, not hers. He was sitting, had been since she’d arrived, head buried in his hands. He refused to get up.

‘You are behaving unlike yourself,’ she said, neither kindly nor unkindly.

Viktor hummed in acknowledgement, hating that tone of hers. She used it to goad, to ask questions disguised as facts. Things that made you spill your guts. He didn’t feel like doing that today, he didn’t feel like doing much of anything. Fighting against the realm was exhausting, a never ending war against himself. He was tired but could not sleep, screams and agonised cries and pleas keeping him awake. They burrowed into his mind like maggots. He wanted it all to stop.

‘I thought you would mock me for coming. Or at least scream at me for interrupting your trying to get a hold of your world.’

He’d had enough.

‘Njeri, what do you want?’ He sounded even more desperate than he felt.

‘Answers, I suppose. For you to tell me what is the matter with you.’

‘Fine.’ He lifted his head and stood on shaky legs, glaring at her. If she was taken aback by his appearance, she did not show it. His eyes were burning with tears, his sight too blurry to truly look at her.

‘I’m fucking tired, Njeri. They,’ he gestured to a pile of bones not far from them, ‘they keep appearing and I am sick of it! Sick of it all. I don’t, I don’t know how to make it better, how to make it stop. I just want it to stop.’

The tears had burned when he’d held them back. They were molten lava as they made their way down his cheeks. He whimpered, close to just letting himself slide to the ground again. ‘Please make it stop.’

‘I…’

‘You can’t, can you? I know you can’t. But I don’t know if you would even want to.’ He spread his arms wide, a choked off laugh escaping him. ‘I either did this or caused it. It’s on me, and on all of those who followed me. And Nuerma’s dying. I didn’t want this, please, I swear I didn’t.’

His legs gave out and he fell to his knees, unaware that the fires around them were growing smaller, the heat diminishing. Head pressed into the dusty ground, he almost yelled.

‘I didn’t, I don’t! I wanted to help and protect and I was wrong, okay? But I can’t change the past, I can’t go back and stop myself from doing it.’ He curled into himself. Njeri still hadn’t said anything.

‘I wish I could, Njeri, but I can’t. I saw war as means to protect what I cared about. It wasn’t, I was wrong. And I’m sorry. I know it won’t bring anyone back, it won’t make up for the pain, but it’s all I have.’

‘Viktor.’

He shook his head, not sure why he did it. He didn’t want to do this anymore. The truth had been wrenched from him, what more did she want?

‘Viktor, look at me,’ she commanded softly, hands reaching out to touch him. ‘It’s alright, I promise nothing will happen. I’ll protect you.’

He stilled at that. ‘Why would you do that?’

The smile was evident in her voice, as were her own tears. ‘You’re one of us, Viktor. We were unable to stop your suffering, but you are still one of us. We can only hold you accountable for what you did, what you caused. Not what the living do in your name. You are one of us, no matter what you’ve done.’

Around them, the world grew darker, a soothing shade of blue. Where there had been dust and dry earth there was now grass, lush and cool. Piles of bones faded away, dimly glowing people taking their place. Most of them were smiling sadly, others were taking in the new surroundings.

‘Will you forgive yourself?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t,’ he whispered, face still pressed into the only patch of dry earth remaining. ‘I just want to be better.’

Njeri hummed, sinking down before him. ‘You can be. And you will be. Look around you, and decide what you want to do. Who you want to be.’

She smiled when he looked up, eyes going wide. Surprise was a good look on him. His eyes were brighter than before, their green slowly returning. Njeri let the relief flow through her. Viktor was not the first human to be made a god, and she supposed a mother never quite gave up the hope she held for her children.

His eyes flickered to the souls in his realm. ‘Will they forgive me?’

‘I don’t know. They might, they might not. They could come to another realm anytime, of course.’ She saw his hands twitch in the grass and took hold of them. ‘I know it never seemed like it, and we did not welcome you with open arms, far from it. But we would like to meet you, and have you meet us. When, and if, you’re ready.’

For a moment he hesitated, looking at her. ‘I think I am, at last,’ he croaked, smiling at her warmly. ‘But there are things I have to do first.’ He closed his eyes, breathing in deeply, familiarising himself with the presence of the souls. They were his people, in life as in death. He’d failed them once, he would do his best not to do so again.

‘You are free to leave, if you wish to do so,’ he addressed them. ‘I do not ask for your forgiveness, and I know what happened will never be forgotten. I do not wish for it to be. I want to do better, and this time around, I will go about it another way. And for that, I need your help.’ He bowed to them, ignoring the hushed whispers of surprise. ‘I’ll need a council.’

Njeri remained where she was, a mere spectator. She did not wish to interfere. The stars had chosen wisely, as they had with all their gods. Viktor’s election was as much punishment as it was redemption. Watching the god of war interact with the souls he was to guard and protect would be interesting.

This realm would grow, and its god with it. They’d all had to find their way. She did not doubt that he would, too.


	15. Taking a stand and paying the price

Caris

Being at Omra’s library always felt like coming home. Even now, with the relief of having freed Sikan and the weight of spontaneously having taken Jonathan with her mixing uncomfortably in her chest, the bookshelves and cushions were a sanctuary. Something to sink and melt into, where nothing mattered but safety, comfort.

The Astronomy study was illuminated only by candles, the blue wax dripping onto golden candle holders. Being used to associating the colour blue with travesty, the study presented a welcome change in association. Blues were only worn on funerals, days of mourning. Omra’s study, however?

It was _decked_ in blue. Velvet armchairs in every corner and the centre of the room, as dark as the night sky. A few of them had ink stains on them, some bigger than others; a stormy winter sky, forever captured. Old wooden bookshelves, clumsily painted in a myriad of light blues, formed a labyrinth. If one looked close enough, they could see various constellations carved into the wood, some of them highlighted with silver water colour. The floor was a mosaic of blue tiles, ranging from dark to light, from grey and blackish blues to tones so light they were almost transparent. The spaces in between were filled with gold, creating a pattern if its own. A star circle, as Florian had once told her, a smile playing on the man’s face, only decipherable when you perched on one of the shelves. Or could stick to walls. Or fly. Never let it be said that Omra was anything but creative.

In Omra’s study, blue was curiosity, a vast sea of knowledge to sink into. Here it was a colour of comfort, the kind you lost yourself in because you wanted to.

Caris remembered the blue hues she had worn when they’d had the memorial for her parents. Looking at the blue in Omra’s study, she couldn’t find any similarities. The blues on her had signified loss. Those around her right now were meant anything but.

Even the cup Omra set down in front of her was blue. Not being able to resist a smile, Caris shook her head fondly. The shifter before her was oddly obsessed with having a colour scheme for every study. No one would ever find one of their blue cups in the history study, where oddly shaped glasses with copper handles reigned.

‘You should drink something,’ Omra said. Their back was turned to her as they rifled through a few scrolls of parchment on their desk, each one bound with a blue ribbon.

Caris swallowed. The ribbons were the same shade as Jonathan’s eyes and they had the same flat look to them. She picked up the cup, sniffing it and wrinkling her nose. It was a clear liquid, too bitter smelling to be water.

‘What is that?’

Omra chuckled, strands of hair falling out of their loose braid as they did. It sounded an awful lot like soft hooting. ‘Would you believe me if I told you it was nightwine?’

‘Nightwine doesn’t look like water, Omra.’

‘Quite right. And this does neither smell nor taste like water because it is vodka.’ They sighed at Caris’ unimpressed look. ‘You’ll thank me for it later on, my dear, trust me. It’ll make talking easier for you.’

She snorted into her cup, fixing Omra with a dark glare. She drank it though, grimacing a bit at the taste. Vodka was rare to come by through official channels but Omra was liked by enough traders for them to hand the librarian a bottle of the clear liquid there and then. Caris herself vastly preferred nightwine, the sweetness more to her taste.

‘What’s there to talk about?’ she muttered darkly, avoiding the bright yellow gaze.

‘The stray siren you brought here, Caris. What is he doing here, being patched up by Florian?’

She gripped the cup hard, wishing it could shatter. It tingled in the palms of her hands, reacting to her energy, almost melting, ready to assume a new form once she issued the command. She did not, inhaling deeply to make the cup return to its original form. It came out a little crooked. She set it down with an apologetic look to Omra, who merely gave her a tight-lipped, yet amused, smile.

‘You didn’t see him, Omra. You don’t know what he said, what happened up there.’

Sighing, the shifter turned to her, their feather coat fluffing up around their shoulders. ‘Indeed, which is why I am asking you to tell me. If I remember correctly, my dear, you weren’t too fond of him a while ago.’

‘No,’ she mumbled. ‘I wasn’t. I thought he was a stuck up little aristocrat, a puppet, an idiot.’

Omra said nothing. They sat down opposite of her, stretching out and letting his features morph. Their legs became longer, talons coming to rest on the mosaic floor with an audible clack. Feathers grew on their face, close to where hair met skin, smoothed back in the same way their hair was. Their coat spread out, melting into their upper body. Large yellow eyes carefully inspected one of the scrolls they had in their lap before sighing, leaving the pieces of paper alone. Their hands had remained the same, the feathers spreading up to their knuckles but going no further. Contrary to their legs, there was no sign of talons. The librarian caught their guest’s mild surprise and snorted.

‘Talons get in the way when I am handling something as delicate as paper. Too sharp. I would hate to accidentally damage one of these documents.’ They sipped their vodka, waving one of their hands, motioning for Caris to continue. ‘You were saying?’

‘I still think he is an idiot.’ Caris frowned, white hair falling into grey eyes as she slumped a bit. ‘No one in their right mind works for Loktur. And if you’re magic and work for this guy, you’re a downright fool.’ The last bit was said softly, her eyes fixed on some point in time far away.

’You were stupid back then, I admit. Blinded by hate and rage and senseless, stupid pride that would have not left an ounce of self preservation if you had had one moment to think.’ Omra stretched, reaching for one of the sandwiches on their plate. An awfully wet sound echoed in the small space as they bit into it, tiny guts painting their teeth red. Caris shuddered, dry gagging for effect. She didn’t mean it. Omra knew, pursing their lips and blowing her a kiss.

’You kiss your mother with that mouth?’

’My mother would have been delighted to receive mice gut sandwiches you ungrateful child.’

Comfortable silence reigned for a few minutes before Caris began fiddling with her cup. Omra snapped their fingers to get her attention, inclining their head. She took the hint easily.

’I don’t,’ she breathed out shakily, getting rid of the uncomfortable feeling of restriction in her throat, ’I don’t want to care about him.’

Omra was well within their rights to feign surprise but they knew better than that. They and Caris had come to an agreement a long time ago, back when they had simply been allies. Now they were friends, and friends did not lie to each other. Omra hated lying to their friends.

’I know you don’t,’ they said carefully. Caris’ eyes were unnaturally bright, frustration becoming too much too handle.

’Then why do I? It’s nothing short of a liability.’ She was shaking, unable to decipher why. ’I’ve seen him on his knees before Loktur, grovelling for acceptance and forgiveness. I don’t know what I was thinking, bringing him here. I shouldn’t have. He’ll rat all of us out without a second thought.’

Omra set their cup down with more force than strictly necessary. ’Now, my dear, don’t go contradicting yourself. You have compassion. Do not try to undermine it by simply choosing to think of it as a liability.’

But it was. Caris wanted to hurl the words inside her head at Omra, wanted them to help her figure out why she brought Jonathan to their library, why she couldn’t just leave the man in the dungeons. It was dangerous and the foresight she so prided herself on had left her.

 _Compassion_.

She wanted to scoff, make the awful swirling nausea threatening to claw its way up her throat go away. Every minute Jonathan spent here, unconscious or conscious, posed a very high risk for all of them. She was endangering all of them and it made her scalp itch.

The pressure behind her eyes grew. Images flickered through her mind, each one an uncomfortable blur until it sharpened quickly before another one replaced it, pushing its way to the forefront of her mind.

The body of a young Elemental collapsing at her feet after she slit his throat, warm blood splattering her and staining her dress. His spirit so devoid of life already, not even his death changed his face. There had been nothing, not even the ghost of a smile or surprise flickering in his gaze. A girl screaming herself hoarse and clawing at the arms of a guard as Caris drove a spear through the child’s brother’s face for attempting to hide that his sister was a shifter. Loktur presenting her with the girl a few months later, her eyes clawed out and tongue a bloody mess, nailed to the stake they’d hung the child from.

Nothing. Looking at both of them, remembering them, she felt nothing except for emptiness.

A man in a red robe, decked in heavy gold and rubies, kneeling before a king whose crown was made of rusted bones. A man, who, by all means, should have power, should feel powerful, cowering. A siren so afraid of his own voice he would rather cut out his own tongue than defy the cruel touches of his master. Being unable to move, to do anything but look. Being unable to reconcile the quivering mess with the kind soul Aeneas spoke of, with the clever, calculating Ruler she met so many times.

’Why couldn’t it have been anyone else?’

Omra stared at her, their eyes giving nothing away. They were as empty as any mirror, throwing her own helplessness back into her face.

She snarled, standing and picking her cup up, hurling it atthe ground. Its shattering would have been satisfying, but it never came, the silence fuelling her frustration.

’Why couldn’t it have been anyone else! I killed so, so many people, Omra,’ she shrieked, pacing and pulling at her own hair. ’I can’t even remember all of them. I only remember the most recent! And never, _never_ , did I feel anything. Not pity, not regret, not even a smidge of disgust at what I was doing. And now, fucking now, it has to happen? With _him_?! Why the fuck does it have to be him, why couldn’t it have been anyone else? All of them deserved pity, deserved mercy, Amira knows, and I never gave it.’

She stopped pacing, hands still buried in her hair. For a moment Omra worried she would start ripping it out, their talons clenching around the cup they’d caught mid-flight. Instead, Caris sunk to her knees in the middle of the room, pressing her forehead against blue tiles.

’There was only ever emptiness, so why does there have to be something now? I was fine with nothing, it didn’t leave so much room for mistakes,’ she whispered.

’Did it leave room for yourself?’

Even as they asked the question, Omra knew they would not receive an answer. They didn’t particularly care about that though. Caris could not hurl their cup and then ignore the uncomfortable questions. The librarian would not have that.

’I believe I asked you a question my dear.’

’What do you want me to tell you Omra?’ She almost winced at the desperation in her own voice.

They wrinkled their nose, feathers fluffing up around them unconsciously. When they spoke it was stiff, as if they had trouble forming the words. ’The truth, please.’ Talons clicked against stone. ’Though, if you think you can lie to me, go ahead.’

_A challenge._

’Humour me.’

’I was fine with it, okay? More than fine. It was, it is better than feeling,’ she waved her hands around, physically fumbling for a word that would not leave her tongue, ’all of this. This is messy and awful and fucking dangerous. What do I do when they search the city for him? What do I do when he goes running to Loktur and we’re all strung from your towers because I didn’t fucking listen to my common sense?’

Omra nodded, yellow eyes trained on the cup in their hands. It would never match the others again, always have that little odd wave in its form.

Caris’ lips wobbled and the pressure behind her eyes gave. ’I don’t want this, Omra. I don’t want to look at all the people I killed and will kill and feel like this.’

’You take a life,’ Omra noted neutrally, raising one eyebrow. ’You can’t truly expect to feel indifferent, Caris.’

She backed up a little, drawing herself up. ’I do what is necessary.’

’And killing them is necessary.’

She looked as if she wanted to throw something again and Omra carefully placed themselves in front of their crockery.

’Yes…no, I don’t know. It was necessary to keep up appearances. It will be necessary in the future. Do you honestly believe Echo has the guts to kill someone? Or Aeneas? Any of your _precious ducklings_?’

Ignoring the warning glare the shifter threw her way, Caris threw her hands up and spread them in an overly exaggerated fashion. Her eyes burned, as did the tears leaving marks on her cheeks.

’Do you think Loktur gives a shit about peace? This fucking game he started with Echo is nothing but a prolonged execution. He decorated our nooses with jewels so we couldn’t tell the difference between a rope and a necklace,’ she spat, letting her voice grow louder with each word. She knew it might carry downstairs, possibly reach Florian and Leah where they were treating Jonathan.

’Fucking say something.’

Omra folded their hands before their body, quietly looking at their friend. They didn’t utter a single word. Her hands shook where she held them in the air, and her lips twitched upwards and downwards rapidly, as if she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to snarl or to smirk.

’And what exactly would you like me to say, my dear?’ Their words carried a challenge, yet they sounded almost indifferent. Omra stretched, plucking a few loose feathers from their coat. They held one up against the light, inspecting it. ’That bringing him here was wrong and we are all in oh so terrible danger now?’

Caris flinched at the sardonic tone. She didn’t want Omra to say it, this wasn’t about what she wanted her friend to say, after all. This was about the consequences of her actions. They needed to understand it had been a temporary lapse of judgement, nothing that would happen again. It couldn’t happen again. Caris would not be the reason for her friends’ deaths. She would not endanger them. She did not work for Loktur, and she needed them to know that. She could do her job.

A crash tore her out of her thoughts. Her mouth hung open as if she had forgotten what she’d wanted to say.

Omra’s eyes were trained on her, swirling with emotions too rapidly to decipher. Trying to make out algae in murky waters would have been easier. Vodka was steadily dripping onto the floor, wetting the tiles. The blue hues were brighter now. One vibrant shade flowed into another, Caris’ tears blurring her vision.

Omra cursed quietly as they stood, taking care to avoid the shards of their own cup. They swallowed a few times. ’You think,’ they breathed, ’you honestly believe we - I - would throw you away because of something like this?’ They didn’t wait for her to answer. Instead, a strangled cry left their lips. Before Caris knew it, she was engulfed in feathers.

’I don’t…I don’t know how to tell you I understand,’ they whispered, gripping Caris tightly. ’I don’t know how to tell you that if anything were to happen to you, to Aeneas or to my ducklings, I would make sure to make everyone in this bloody city pay. I don’t know how to make you understand that you did not endanger us by bringing him here. And I am sorry I cannot take away your fear.’

Caris bit down hard on her lip, splitting it in the process. She didn’t want to cry, crying meant…she couldn’t remember what crying meant.

Omra, as if sensing it, squeezed her even tighter in return, continuing their soft mumbling. ’But we would never abandon you. Caris, we knew there is a price to pay when you take a stand. And who knows, we might have an ally in Jonathan now, and that would also be thanks to you.’ Both of them shook slightly as Caris let out a wet snort. She tried to stop the sobs creeping up her throat. Omra tutted softly. ’None of that dearie, you are allowed to cry, to feel. It’s healthy. Go on, I’ll keep you safe.’

If shrieks and howls could be heard echoing throughout the library, no one said anything once they subsided. The life inside the building carried on, silence settling over it like a warm blanket after a hot bath: comforting, secure.

Hours passed. They felt like minutes, mere moments. The moon shone through one of the windows, bathing the study in cool bright light. Caris and Omra sat huddled together on the ground, passing an innocent looking bottle back and forth.

’I’m pretty sure this is supposed to have wood polish in it instead of vodka,’ Caris mused, wrinkling her nose at the bottle. She frowned, passing it back to Omra, who was almost completely covered in feathers now.

They snorted, nodding. ’Yes, yes, yes of course. Which is why not one of the silly little soldiers at the borders, never mind the guards of this city, will ever _think_ to, to,’ they tried to snap their fingers, dismayed when they couldn’t, claws clacking against each other uselessly, ’check! They won’t think to check the bottles.’

Caris hummed next to them. A thoughtful smile spread across her face. ’I could tell them,’ she said with a lot more authority than she held. Omra lightly cuffed her over the head. Both of them knew she wouldn’t. It was silent for another few minutes.

’Does anyone,’ Caris sucked her cheeks in, trying to make her tongue build the words. She was so not made for vodka. ’Does anyone even remember why vodka was banned?’

’Wasn’t it because this fucker, what’s his name again, Ronald? Ronald Webster?’

’The first or the second?’

In the history of Gynasou, hardly anyone had ever been made fun off as much as the Webster family. Caris delighted in it.

Omra shrugged. ’Which one are they on now?’

’The twenty-second, I think.’

Pulling a face, Omra sighed and started to count under their breath. ’Then it was the fifth, I think. Yeah, the poor sod’s middle name was Archibald. Named him after Ronald Webster the first, his parents. Why would you do that to a child?’

The two of them looked at each other, snorting and giggling like madmen. The bottle was almost empty.

’He got so drunk he bought a brothel and proceeded to turn it into a distillery, didn’t he?’

Omra stared at her, blinking once, twice, before folding into themself and laughing hysterically. ’I heard it was because he rode a carriage pulled by sheep and went on to claim he was the gods’ chosen bringer of oblivion.’

’No way,’ Caris said. She shook her head, white hair sticking to her lips. Irritated, she tried to blow it away. She got some strands into her mouth in the process.

Omra observed their friend with amusement they did not even bother to hide. They nodded enthusiastically. ’Of course. I even have it on paper, somewhere in the archives.’

Caris rolled her eyes at them, having given up on trying to get her hair out of her face. She wagged her finger in her friend’s feathery face. ’Putting it on paper and leaving it in your archives does not make it true Omra.’

The shifter squawked, clearly affronted. They opened their mouth to say something in return when the door banged open unceremoniously.

Florian stood before them, long hair braided back. He looked decidedly unimpressed by the scene welcoming him. The keys in one of his pockets jingled loudly when he tapped his foot. ’Are you two quite done?’

’Florian, my boy. We’re having a lovely discussion about how Ronald Webster the fifth managed to get vodka banned in Gynasou! Please,’ Omra sat up in a poor imitation of their usual composure, ’explain to our dear Caris that he was a poor excuse for a prophet, not a drunkard who purchased a brothel.’

Caris giggled as multiple emotions crossed Florian’s face all at once. He’d spent the last few hours taking care of an exhausted siren, yet he looked as well put together as always. Not one strand of glossy black hair escaped his braid, his uniform was as clean as ever and not even the obsidian prothesis had any dust on it. She sometimes envied how he kept so clean.

’Our _other_ guest is awake and distraught. It would do if one of you sobered up enough to go and greet him.’ He shot a meaningful glance at Omra, who seemed less inebriated in the matter of a few seconds. They exchanged a few words with Florian before turning back to Caris, hands smoothing their feathers back. Florian left almost silently.

’You should speak to him.’

’I’m drunk.’

’That obviously does not mean you cannot hold a conversation,’ Omra replied sharply, waving their hand dismissively.

’You talk to him. You seem a lot more fit for the job than I do.’ Caris had absolutely no intention of descending the almost endless staircase and talking to Jonathan. She knew that, and if Omra didn’t - not yet anyways- , they would figure it out soon enough. From the look they shot her, all quiet anger and frustration, they had. She met the gaze head on, not backing down in the least.

’Pity that. I had hoped to not have to do this.’ Omra sighed theatrically, closing the distance between them and Caris far too quickly for her liking. They grabbed her, steered her to one end of the room and opened a ledge hidden under the couch there.

Peering down into the darkness, Caris felt anticipation crawl up her spine. She was nauseous for a wholly different reason than she had expected when they had started drinking. She glared, eyes narrowing dangerously. ’You wouldn’t.’

’Wouldn’t I?’ They pulled her closer, telling her to hold on. The last thing Caris saw before Omra spread their arms, wings now, and plunged both of them into the abyss was their infuriating smirk. ’Don’t worry my dear, it’s as deep as it looks.’

It was indeed. The air rushing by was not as biting as Caris had thought but it certainly wasn’t pleasant either. Their trip down to the healing rooms was quick and less tedious than taking the stairs. To Caris displeasure, it also helped clear her head a little. She still wasn’t prepared to talk to Jonathan when she stood before the red door. ’I loathe you.’

Omra looked up from where they were opening a window. ’No,’ they said gently, a smile on their face, ’you don’t.’

’Yeah, I don’t.’ She felt their stare, knew they were waiting for her to continue. ’What the fuck do I say?’

’I don’t know, my dear, but I reckon you have about five seconds to figure out a greeting before I shift and am off for a midnight flight.’ They winked at her. ’Good luck.’

Caris turned around to watch the great horned owl take flight, a mere flutter of wings. Omra would make sure nothing in the city was amiss. She would be here, most likely making a fool of herself. Groaning, she turned around to face the red door again, this time turning the handle and walking into the room.

Five days later, two things happened:

Jonathan received a letter informing him about an uprising outside of Kasserra and asking for help. He watched it burn and crumble to ash in his fireplace.

Caris, ordered to Viktor’s Hill on short notice, was laid in chains and thrown into the very same dungeons she had rescued Sikan from. No one came to her rescue, as she had ordered. Jonathan kept her company, and to her great delight, brought nightwine and snacks with him.

It was nice. Talking to someone who physically wore their noose was oddly relaxing. Whenever she reminded him of it - half in jest, half to tear him out of the mindset that Loktur wasn’t the one in the wrong - he replied that he wasn’t sure if he could get her one just as pretty. More tears were shed than mentioned on those occasions.


End file.
